Airborne
by StormDragon666
Summary: As a half bird experiment born in a laboratory, Sakura is a prisoner. As a half human, she wants to be free. As escaped prey she will be hunted by predators. As an intelligent, flying creature, Sakura must trust herself to find true freedom. MultiSaku
1. First

**EDIT, July 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone every day at lunch in eighth grade. Every day she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, July 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with many friends and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

Summary: As a half bird experiment born in a laboratory, Sakura is a prisoner. As a half human, she wants to be free. As an intelligent, flying creature, Sakura must trust herself to find true freedom.

Uhhh…start.

Oh, wait, read this little thing here: Please note that this story begins in January of 2008. Basically so I can know how old everyone is, which doesn't matter THAT much but...but. Yeah.

Chapter the 1st.

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January 3rd, 2:24 AM (very late at night) ...Karin POV

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'_Daily Log. January 3rd, 2008. Writer, Karin. Secretary of Orochimaru, Director of Chambers Inc. _

_Today, January 3__rd__, our most interesting experiment has exhibited a new ability. Not only is it the first female in almost twenty-five years of experimentation, she has shown that her brain is capable of problem solving. _

_While undergoing the usual trials of an average Sunday at one of Chambers Inc.'s secretive laboratory bases, Number 9, nicknamed "Sakura" by specialist Kabuto Yakushi and his fellows, (current weight, ninety pounds, current height, five foot four inches) broke free of her bondage by slipping her wrists through metal handcuffs. Never before has Number 9 shown any sign of useful intelligence. Although she has undergone this trial many times in her years, never before has she successfully escaped her restraints. _

_Because of her rather small size, Number 9—possibly—realized that her hands could be squeezed through the cuffs if enough effort was put forth. She is currently under heavier security and surveillance than usual, watched for any other sign of intelligence that could prove her worth. _

_Number 9, made as a war weapon for the United States in March of 1999, never showed any signs of being useful. She has never uttered even a grunt or squeak since her birth, and is confirmed as mute, despite having perfectly functioning vocal chords. As most observations showed, she has no interests in her life other than silently twiddling her thumbs, staring and sleeping. Today is a breakthrough for all of Chambers Inc and for America. As this is a special creature that will not expire or even lose her youthful appearance for likely a century, she has much time to realize the rest of her potential. _

_Next, Number 9's brain shall be tested for creative problems solving skills. For a basic test, she will likely be put into a room where she will be given a child's jigsaw puzzle of ten pieces and forced to solve it. Failure will result in her usual punishment, which, everyone knows, she hates and is deathly afraid of. _

_Once the intelligence of an average child is grasped and maintained, she will be put to the training she was born for: battle, combat and destruction, the same as all the experiments before her. All the others—coincidentally all male—have near-perfect scoring in all these courses. Expectations for Number 9's scoring in her training will be significantly higher or significantly lower, depending on whether or not I myself am there. I have never been one to be soft on individuals who seem weaker or lesser in any way. They are, in fact, the ones who need the most attention.  
_

_In her combat training, "Sakura" will put to use the single trait that differs her from all human beings, the trait that we hope will, for many decades, protect America and be a sign of courage and strength: _

_Her wings. _

_Daily Log. January 3rd, 2008. Writer, Karin. Secretary to Orochimaru, Director of Chambers Inc. _

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Time unknown ...Sakura POV

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…Hello? Who are you? I've never seen you before. Are you another of those damn scientists? No? Oh, then, excuse me. I shouldn't be so rude to you. Well…what's your name?

That's a nice name. Very pretty...I like it better than mine. Mine's weird. My name is Sakura. I hear it has something to do with my hair, but I haven't heard exactly what and can't piece it together. It's short and pink-yes, really-and that's all it's ever gonna be. Are you here to see about me, or are you looking for something else? Ah, me? Well. Hh...okay, I suppose I can tell you. It's not like _you _can expose me.

I'm Sakura. Hey.

My home is in hell, and no, it's not an underground, red place full of fire and evil laughter, it's a laboratory somewhere in America-of course-where everything is sharp and everything hurts. Every day there's a piece of me that expresses a wish to die and I have to put mental duct tape over its mouth and it's very difficult to create mental duct tape.

The place I live in is called Chambers Laboratory. It's one of many of its kind, and there are creatures like me out there who suffer just like me. Here at Chambers, everything looks the same and it's kind of challenging to name a room I haven't bled or cried in. They are all painted white and pure as God (Oh. Oh. Irony.). The scientists who work here all wear white. The only splashes of colors are me, a few other experiments, and the blue gloves and boots that the scientists wear. Nasty, polluted-ocean blue.

Eight years ago, almost nine, I was born here, but I know I look much older than that. An eight-year-old child would be half my size. Apparently I look sixteen or so, but I've never seen another sixteen-year-old to compare myself to, so I can only assume they're right. I also assume they are right in what they say about my appearance: it won't change. I get to look and be sixteen forever. Yay. Forever. Forever in here? What a fucking joke. I wouldn't wish a life like this on anyone but the most black-hearted murderer or rapist. But it's hard. I don't know any other life. I don't know what else I should have, except something that's not this. This just...is ungodly. I hate it. I hate it so much and I hate what I'm forced to do every day.

I hate being pulling by a leash and collar and I hate sleeping in a dog crate that I can't sit up in and I hate being opened up with surgical knives so people can touch and and prod my organs and I hate having metal blocks dropped on my legs for strength resistance or some such BS and I hate needles in my skin and I hate everything the scientists do with me and And I hate when I can't think about anything but that, anything good and enjoyable. I wish I could think about cats or something.

Don't feel sorry for me, please. I'm dealing with it okay, and it's my fault for having you in here and talking about this. And...and now it's all awkward because I'm halfway through and I still haven't answered everything. Ugh. I guess I'll just keep going, keep explaining. Get your pen ready. You wanna know why this all happens? Why there are people who would do that to a totally innocent person? I have wings, is why.

Because these hell-rejects screwed with my DNA while I was still in the womb (a phrase which doesn't make sense to me; I'm very sure I was a test tube baby) I was born with these things growing out of my back. And hey, that's reason enough to do this torture to _anybody, _right? It's all for science! "Let's _stab _this girl in the name of science!" _That's _what goes on in this building. That's it. No, really, that's it.

And if I don't respond the right way, they shock me. How? How the hell do you think? Well, not with a dang Pikachu. With a shock collar. It's been on me for almost four years now. And while it's not that tight, but it's probably left a mark on my neck by now and I hope it doesn't get embedded in my skin. I stick my fingers on the inside once a week or so to prevent this, when the scientists aren't watching and when I think I'm at an angle where no security camera can see me do it. I heard a rumor from a worker called Genma that one of the other experiments had that happen to him. His collar can never be taken off now, and that sucks for him. But Genma is a chain smoker and very unobservant, and all the rest of his colleagues are heartless demons, so perhaps I should know better than to listen to rumors that he circulates. One thing he does circulate, though, all too often, is the plain and simple fact that I'm not alone here. As though that needs to be circulated.

No, little Sakura's not the only one. I have fellow experiments here. They, and these scientists, are the only things on God's green earth that I truly hate.

Each of them has something, well, worth staring at. I've got wings. Naruto, I mean, Number-oh, let me explain. Naruto is his nickname, technically. Officially, he's "Number 8" because he was the eighth experiment this lab churned out, the eighth to be "born". I'm "Number 9" because...well. Durr.

This means I'm the last in line, the youngest and the most recent. I don't know if being older would have made a difference, but I feel like being both young and small is a bad card to be dealt, at least when you compare me to the eight other experiments. I mean, they're all tall and big and intimidating. They're great oaks in the forest and I'm...like, a cactus or something. Very small and obviously non-belonging. It's frightening for a small person to look at a tall person, at least for me. It's also frightening It's also intimidating for small people to have to look at really tall animals, which is what they may as well be.

One of the experiments, like I said is Number 8, and like all the other experiments, he was given a name by the people around here who don't have such spiky, painful sticks up their asses. His name is Naruto. I have wings because I am the product of some DNA-splicing with a human and a bird. Naruto has orange ears and a big gold tail because he the result of mixing a human egg with the DNA of a red fox. His features are kind of cute, actually. The first time I saw him, I fell into the trap of assuming they made him a sweet little puppy. Wrong. No.

There's another older experiment, Number 5, "Deidara," who's also worth speaking of. He and I are the only two out of nine who have wings. I'm guessing he's part parrot, because his wings, which are much bigger than mine, are _blue._ And I know that parrots have very bright plumage, but blue wings just seem very odd to me. It's like having purple hair. It's like...I don't even know. This is one occasion where I can't really articulate my thoughts. Blue wings! Geez! I doubt he's ever used them to fly (the scientists who are so big on experimentation and research just _abhor _birds that can fly) but I know that he's got strength elsewhere in him. But I think I'll save that for later.

It nearly hurts to think of them. I hate them, I fear them, they're in my nightmares far, far too often, and for good reason: they all seem like they want nothing from me except to tear me limb from limb and gobble up the pieces. Without a doubt, the worst thing about the other experiments is that the scientists like to stick me with one of them in a big room and see what happens. Weekly, or more.

And the same thing always happens. The male experiment charges at me with a predator's grin. I run. I can't fly and I'm scared to fight, so I run.

This one lady, Anko, says it's like "cat and mouse" (and I'm not kidding, she says that all the damn time. The joke never dies with her.). And I guess it is. I've heard about, but never seen, how a dog chases a cat. The cat usually ends up running for it's life. And I'm always the cat in this situation. No matter which male experiment is stuck in a great white room with me, they always try to get me. I always run with my heart in my throat and my mind running strategies to flee like a marathon. If I'm lucky, I get to leave with feathers clipped from my wings, from some experiment's snatching hand coming too close. At worst...well, at worst I almost die. That's it. It could be Naruto or Neji or...you know what, I think I will think about them just this once. It's been a while since I've reviewed them all thoroughly in my head. I should always keep what I know of them up-to-date.

Number 1, the first creature that Chambers Inc. ever spawned (in ninety-two, I believe) is called Kakashi. He is the eldest experiment, and possibly the smartest of them. While I look like a sixteen-year-old, Kakashi appears to be a human male somewhere in his twenties. He wears two black scarves on his face, one over his mouth and nose, and one over his left eye. It's a little ridiculous. The bottom one has never been lifted, so I've never seen all of Kakashi's face. Sometimes a breeze will life the top bandana when he's chasing me, though and I'll see his hidden eye, and it's literally red. Not in the iris, where the color of an eye should be, but in the sclera, too. Does he even know that a regular human would freak the hell out if they woke up and their eyes were like that? Sometimes I theorize about it and I usually end up deciding it's caused by jaundice. 'Cause nothing else makes sense.

Kakashi doesn't have any obviously inhuman features on him, and no scientist ever happened to say it in front of me, so I could not guess his animal half until just a few months ago. A scientist named Yuugao talked about him, and according to her, Kakashi is half-wolverine. Kakashi, usually calm and mellow, can dish out some serious fear and pain when he's got a helpless target like me in sight. One of his favorite tactics is to simply never stop. He never runs out of dashes and attacks and furious roars. I've heard he can can easily slice a tree in half with one claw and do I ever believe it! I decided a long time ago I don't like Kakashi or wolverines. It's just been a stroke of incredible luck that my speed is just a smidge greater than his. That's the only thing that keeps him from ripping me apart: my speed.

I don't know the birth dates of any other experiment, but I know their age order, and the next eldest is Number 2, called Sasori, half-scorpion. He's known for his poison bite and sting, and I can't claim that I'm religious, but I thank the Lord that he's never managed to bite or sting me. He appears human, too, except for this long, dark tail extending from the base of his spine, and it's got a claw-thing on the end of it like any scorpion, and he can twitch and bend it like any scorpion, and he can move and sway like any dancing nightmare. This particular hellhound makes an appearance in my dreams way too much. Could have something to do with that time Yuugao and Torune had me drink (Ugh! UGH!) some of his venom. One half-ounce of venom and a seizure later, they discovered I was not immune. Bummer.

Number 3 is a half-weasel humanoid nicknamed Itachi. Again, he looks like a regular human, except for his freaky eyes. Kakashi has got just one red eye, but both of Itachi's have red, diseased-looking sclera. I learned a long time ago that his eyes were tampered with during many surgeries, but I don't know if that means their redness was an accident or made that way on purpose. I'm leaning more toward the opinion that they, in their mad scientist-ness, made a mistake. It's not a stretchto say these people aren't perfect. Maybe it was also an accident that they made his eyes capable of hypnosis, which, by the way, is real, but has a lot more to do with the human mind being sleepy than any magic or card trick. And Itachi...Itachi can make you sit still while he run his hands through your hair and gets ready to tear it out. Evading him in the white rooms successfully is deserving of a medal, because I do it without _looking at him. _Yeah. And what impressive stuff have _you _done lately?

Number 4 doesn't have the luck of the first three. He truly looks like a monster. Next in line is Zetsu. He's not even part animal. He's part Venus flytrap (I'm serious!) and I can't even think about him without feeling fear, and believe me when I say it's rational. Zetsu has this totally whack ability to, firstly, say, "Hey, fuck all laws of science," and then _become_ anything around him. He can melt into the ground and pop out of a tree behind you as easily as I can blink, and if I could just watch that from a distance, I'd be fascinated with how he's totally manipulating the world. But I can't, and I can't ever hope for such an opportunity. When I'm put with Zetsu, I can never stop moving, dodging, never stop looking like a crazy deer running from a wolf or I know he'll get me. He can become part of the ground and grab me whenever he wants. And Zetsu has always looked like a ravenous carnivore and not much else.

'Kay, already said that Number 5 is Deidara, a probably-half-parrot experiment. I went over his wings, and his next important trait is, I think, his hair. It's in a style that I've never seen before, a style that would actually be cool if it wasn't on a servant of Satan. When I first saw it, I was very little and not as knowledgable as I am now. I laughed out loud at the strange girl in front of me. And three seconds later I was running from a winged monster who I then realized was not a girl. And five seconds after that, I was dodging bombs (let me finish) that got shot out of his palms. Did I mention Deidara has mouths on his palms that can eat dirt and spit out stuff that explodes? Don't get me started on the tongues of those mouths. I've been so unlucky as to see them up close and they look normal, I guess. Except when I jump ten feet away and he sticks out his hand and the tongues lash out out at me and try to whip my skin off. Yes, you read that right.

Number 6, you say? Why, that's Neji. He's half-caracal, a cat of the desert with awesome jumping abilities. He's got a brown tail, and caracal ears on his head, so like Naruto, he's got four ears and probably kick-butt hearing. He also has very long hair, and it looks a little like that of a worker here named Kin. I also believe he had some surgery that messed with his eyes, like Itachi and maybe Kakashi. He can strain his eyes so much that veins will push up around them, and when that happens, his accuracy in everything is doubled. The scientists love that. In white rooms with me, it means his usual attempts to claw at me will be that much closer to hitting. I usually leave an encounter with Neji missing bits of my clothes, and when he sees that, he stares. Ghugh, it makes me cringe!

And lastly Number 7. He's easily the biggest, most muscular humanoid I've ever seen and the last person on Earth I would ever want to see in a dark alley. This is Kisame. Half-bull shark, and it's beyond obvious. The guy has gills for goodness' sake, and for some reason, the scientists were possessed to give him a five-foot long sword and...and I don't know. Those fuckers and their ideas are beyond me. Kisame, anyhow, loves to swim, and while I normally get put in a big, white room to be chased by a male experiment, when it's with Kisame, there's a chance we'll be put in a white room...filled with water. Kisame's weird ability is to control the movement of water. I love swimming, I do, and even with my wings dragging on me, I'm good at it, and I can dodge underwater attacks and even hold my breath for a good amount of time. But I can't defend myself when I get hit with a fist made of water. He does this with some telepathy that I'm sure would be revolutionary in the world of normal scientists, but here, mind-control of water is just whatevs, and it's the fact that he'll try and hold me down and drown me that's really interesting. But I don't want to talk about that. Please.

Number 8, since I haven't really explained, is Naruto, a half-fox little demon in a bottle who loves to run _next _to me while he chases me...when he can. Usually, he fails. While he's very fast, he's distracted easily. I can get him off my tail easier than I can Kakashi. He's the stupid one, you see. And yet somehow, he's the only one who was able to lead me into a trap. To my credit, I was only two years old, looking like a six-year-old, I'm sure, when I first met Naruto and sat in a white room with him. The beast actually got me to come over and pet his ears while he purred like the most delighted little kitten. I knew something was wrong when the purring turned to growling. I knew to get away just in time to avoid his hands slamming down onto me and truly trapping me. Naruto's little power is like Kisame's, but with the very air: he seemingly to control it, make it turn orange and shove it forward like it's an invisible boulder. I call it Orange Fu. But not aloud.

Number 9? That's me, or did you forget? I'll do this, but I'll make it short. I'm Number 9, AKA Sakura. I like medical trivia, debating with myself, swimming, sleeping, and the concept of flying. Pleased to meet you. I have no special sci-fi powers, unless flight counts. But I haven't done that yet, and it remains nothing but a dream. I'm called special among the Numbers because I'm the first and only female. I don't know how it happened, but females must be rare in their DNA-splicing work.

Plus the whole female thing makes me more interesting to attack in pair-up trials. Scientists say all the time how much more enthusiastic the male experiments are to see me in a white room than another male. I'm a great prize for them to try flaying and eating, while another guy is just not apparently interesting. So no, I don't like boys fighting over me.

I don't even get why they do it. I never did anything to them. Why do they chase me around and smile and growl at me? Why do they roar when they hurt me? I have theories, but they all boil down to the same stuff. One: They look at me and see tasy prey. Two: They're dumb as rocks and don't know what else to do. Three: they're just fucking evil. Zetsu once popped out of the ground and aimed a punch at my thigh that hit so hard I could feel my bones coming close to snapping. Oh, and there was that time Kisame got a hold of my foot while we were in an underwater cage and kept me under so long I almost fainted from lack of air. I can only go underwater for about three minutes, you see. He wanted me down there for four and twenty-one seconds. Heartless...piece of shit. I wish _he _would drown. I'd like to watch. I'd like to put it on Youtube. Genma would put it up there.

Usually, though, some scientist will shout something to stop the trial before it gets as ugly as my terror-filled mind thinks it can get. I'll usually get shocked via shock collar and the one who's chasing me just stops and is led away by a bunch of workers with forked, metal sticks.

You know, I'm very fond of the last two theories, I mean, mixing them up. Not only are the male experiments bats out of hell, but they're too dumb to know any better. I love thinking about that, because it makes me think about the opposite of that. The opposite of dumb. The opposite of what the scientists believe. And it's me.

My name is Sakura. My scientist upbringers think I can't solve a four-piece puzzle. But in truth, I can do the Pytharogeon theorem in my head and name every bone in the human body. So suck on that.

It's been one heck of a job making the scientists believe I'm this stupid. I remember the first time they gave me the block with the square and round holes in it. And I picked up a square peg and tried to put it in a round hole, again and again. I was half a year old and to me, the fact that my plan, one of my very first plans, fooled them, was the most hilarious thing on Earth. Forever after, reinforced by me pretending to be a dumbass, the scientists all think I'm a few notches away from MR, and they struggle to explain "square is not circle" to me all the time. In the past year of so, it's actually become easier. I just pretend to be one of the males. (Hah! Burn!) I even try to make my strength weak and inconsistent. This is more difficult than the mental process. Once in a while, I'll shove a big obstacle out of my way when I'm with a male experiment, and the scientists write off my strength as adrenaline. I have everyone fooled, and no one knows how incredibly wrong they are.

Every day of my life, I've been listening, learning, and knowing. As needles are stuck into my arms, or as I'm pulled down the hall by a leash, I listen to the scientists talk about work, formulas, relationships, movies, politics, donuts, traffic jams, and everything in between, and as I listen to them, I understand what they are. From listening, I learned everything I know now. I learned to spell words, speak English, do math in my head, know that the Force is with me, and appreciate people like Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Morgan Freeman.

I've had this little nagging _thought _in my head that's always told me to keep quiet and listen, and that's what's gotten me this far. But for silent, body-shaking sobs, I've never spoken a word or uttered a single sound in all my eight years, and you _better_ believe it.

I am not, no way in hell, as glaringly stupid as the male experiments. They can't talk, but they can make animal sounds, and understand basic commands like "stop" and know the difference between yes and no. Growls and purrs and snarls are the only sounds they can make their vocal chords cough up. Personally I think their brains and their speech match. With both those working at full capacity, you might even be able to get them to tell you the answer to one plus one.

One thing I can be thankful for is that I'm not like them. I'm better than them. I've kept quiet and listened to the scientists and workers-the different classes of employees-as much as possible, and taught myself everything, all in my head. I like to fancy my knowledge would challenge that of a human adult, and hell, it probably would, considering I'm constantly around people who know telemetry and six or more different animal anatomies. My brain and my awesome ability to keep quiet about it is what's getting me out of here. My mind is what's going to get me my freedom. My escape.

I've been listening and watching for all my eight years, not making a sound for scalpel or fear or pain, all because I want freedom.

Recently, I've heard little gossip rings talking about new trials for us experiments. Outdoor trials. I've looked through windows before. Sure, maybe the last time I saw a window was a year ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. Outside, the world is blue and green and more beautiful than words can dependably describe. Plants like Zetsu—no, er…much nicer and prettier than Zetsu—grow anywhere and everywhere, and the sky, the sky that you all consider so boring and so ordinary...it's there. It's waiting for me to come see it. It covers every last patch of the planet, and everyone but me has seen it. I want to see it, too. I want to feel it. I want to fly in it. I _will _fly in it. I will be free in it.

When the outdoor trials come, I'll do what any bird would do when set free and outside. I'll open my wings and fly away.

Once I'm outside, once I'm free of bondage and set in front of some other Number to be chased like prey—because that's doubtlessly what I'll be doing out there—I'll turn around, run, open my wings for the first time in my life, jump up and fly. I'll escape Chambers, fly far away, and they'll never find me again. They'll never have another chance to stick knives, needles, syringes or spikes into me. Those scientists will never again hit me with bricks or metal plates. The other experiments will never strike fear into me with claw, fang, tail, glare or growl again. I'll float in the sky forever and be free like the birds I've only heard about.

I've lived almost nine years in this hell and I am getting out.

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January something, according to I-love-thinking-out-loud-in-front-of-everyone Karin; maybe early morning since I'm tired…? ...Sakura POV

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I was sitting in my cage at some point many days later, trying to sleep. My cage is really just a dog crate, except if I was a dog then I'd actually be able to sit up and stretch my legs in it, and I can't now. The only pillow I have is a dent in the corner towards the top that had been worn away from year after year of my head settling there. Sakura's Dent in the Box is, at the least, a place nobody's tried to steal from me, and that's nice.

Just then I was waking up from a dream that had something to do with the sky being green, and I cursed myself for waking. I fell asleep but didn't have the sweet dream again. It was a comfortable sleep though, and since it was peaceful in my quiet, bare room I could almost forget how sore my legs and back were and how my shock collar felt far too hot and uncomfortable today. Then I heard the door open, and I rubbed my eyes to rid them of sleepiness. I heard the brisk, no-fucking-nonsense-ever steps that could only belong to Karin. Before long, I saw her signature extra-tall blue boots standing before my cage. I heard the jingling sounds of her fumbling with some keys. She crouched down and I stared at her strange hair while she undid the double locks on my cage door.

"Come on, get up." The command was hurried and sharp and unkind, a wonderful complement to the rest of her. I pretended not to hear or understand. Karin believed the act, who'd've guessed.

I was looking at Karin's hair—short and unkempt on one side and long and neat on the other, as weird as it was every day—when the door opened and she shouted something at me, pointing towards the door of my room. I moved and crawled out of my cage and stood up. I took the precious seconds to stretch my stiff legs and arms, then my hands shot to my neck.

Karin was shouting at me again, but I only registered the pain that jolted from my neck down. She had shocked me using the shock collar to get me motivated, as she usually did, being her pain-causing self. I frowned and promptly stopped tears from coming out. I swallowed and slowly set my hands down, preparing to crawl out of the cage. Karin jabbed me with a cane and I started towards the white door of the white room towards the, gasp, white hallway. As soon as I came into the hallway, two men in white coats and blue boots slapped handcuffs on me, and attached a chain to my shock collar. One of the men took hold of the chain. I heard Karin press a button on a remote and electricity again coursed through me.

I shuddered with the terrible pain but walked as she jabbed me in the back again, between my wings. I cringed, letting out a sigh, just about the only sound-like thing I could do besides breathe heavily. Karin jabbed me with a cane whenever she wanted me to turn a corner. Thwack my right side to turn right, thwack my left side to turn left. The other two men walked stoically beside me. The one who held the chain to my collar didn't seem to have any interest in pulling it and causing me pain...this time.

Eventually, after turning many corners and going down a flight of stairs, the man who held the chain to my collar came to two double doors and reached into his pocket. I heard the jingling of keys, and as he searched for a certain one on a ring with at least three dozen keys on it, I looked out the tiny square windows on the two double doors. I saw patches of pale blue, white and even pink.

_The sky! The sky's right out there! _

I hoped to God that I wasn't tense with anticipation. I wanted to look neutral and stupid. Average Day Sakura. The doors were kicked open by the second man, who didn't hold my chain, and I closed my eyes as I was suddenly blinded by something harsh and white. At first I thought it was a flashlight that the maintenance workers sometimes carry to fix broken things in dark places, but realized it was too big and bright to be one of those dinky things.

There was no time to wait for my eyes to adjust if I wanted this to work, so I blinked several times and let them go their own way. Karin jabbed me hard between the wings. I started walking, and the pain between my shoulder blades didn't seem to matter at all. My bare feet walked out on something cool and...and unbelievably soft. I looked up and saw the awe-inspiring blueness of the sky above me. It was tinged pink and orange with what I assumed was a sunset, and I almost wanted to cry at its beauty. Poems and ballads about the sky and the sunset and love and anything were nothing in comparison to the true subject. It looked even more amazing than I'd dreamed. I reminded myself quickly that there'd be time to admire the sky after I got out of here.

I looked around as scientists and worker bustled about in their white coats, talking and whispering hurriedly as though they were late for something. I saw the green stuff all over the ground...grass, right? This stuff was so much better than the green thingy that covered Zetsu. I gave a half-smile, and then made it disappear. _'Not a single sign, remember? Keep a blank face or it all might go down the drain!' _

I kept myself busy by looking around, desperately trying to keep my confusion and awe out of my expression. The outdoor yard-place had a huge brick wall around it, about as tall as nearly four Kisames. Not even the nimblest experiments, Neji and Kakashi, would be able to jump it. I certainly wouldn't. Thank you, wings! A fringe of barbed wire covered the top of it, as though anyone who could somehow climb the wall would have their hands pierced to ribbons or possibly electrocuted. I shuddered fearfully at the latter thought.

There were a few cameras on the brick wall—most of them were directed at me, I noted slowly. Then suddenly I felt someone's rough hand undoing the chain on my collar. It was taken away and the handcuffs ripped off. I rubbed my wrists and pretended to be absorbed in the task. A few minutes later, all the white-coated people started rushing inside through the double doors I'd come out through.

"Get out there!" a man yelled at me. Electricity zapped my neck and shoulders and with a silent gasp I staggered out towards the middle of the field. I shoved the tight collar up my neck to rub the sore part that it usually rested on. Woefully, tenderly, I felt the skin. It hurt to touch and felt hot and raw under my fingers.

"Be ready! Prepare to record everything you see!" I heard someone shouting from above me.

I pushed my collar back down, hoping no one had noticed me feeling me pained neck, and turned around. All up the incredibly high wall of the Chambers Inc. building, there were balconies that jutted out of the wall. People were coming out from inside the building filling up these balconies and staring down at me with video cameras and notepads in their hands. Just like reporters. Huh.

I felt fear and anxiety starting to rise in me as everything quieted and they all stared at me. I wondered if I was shivering. I backed up a few steps, remembering that I was probably going to get chased around the yard by one of the male experiments. I looked around for once, ready to run in case Zetsu popped up out of the ground. I stared around the yard. I was happy to note that the brick wall around this outdoor place-four Kisames high, remember-was not nearly as high as the Chambers Inc. building itself. It would be easier to fly over a two-story-high brick wall than a six-story-high building.

Back to looking for the males. I stared around, squinting. The light seemed to be growing dimmer. As I'd heard, the sun set and rose in the sky, making light brighter and dimmer. It must have been nighttime now, as the light was getting worse and worse. It wasn't much of a problem for me, though. Birds were creatures of fantastic vision, and that characteristic of them had been successfully cloned into me. I stared into the darkness and shadows, searching for Itachi, who had his evil ways of not being seen by anyone.

I found something worse.

There, in a dark corner where I foolishly hadn't noticed them hiding in shadows, was Sasori and Itachi. My breath hitched in my throat. The two of them almost always were given dark clothes to wear, it wasn't a wonder I hadn't noticed them in the shade and shadows before. My breath decided to hitch some more when Neji stepped out of the darkness, followed by Kakashi and Deidara. Soon enough, all eight of the other part-human men emerged from the dark corner, a scant fifty feet away from me.

All eight of my worst life enemies stood in front of me, all looking perfectly capable of tearing me apart. My wings went shivery and cold. I started at each one of them in turn, and, no surprise, they were all staring at me.

And they all smiled.

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Hmmm…what happens next? Find out next chapter.

To clear a few things up, since I know a few things got confusing…Uh,

**A.) **Sakura and all other experiments were created in the laboratory. Kakashi was only made in the labs fifteen years ago yet he appears to be twenty-something. _Sakura is only about 8 years old but she appears 16_. This is true for all the rest of the experiments. However old they actually are, they look youthful-ish, and do not gain aging features like normal people. In simpler words, they stay sexy basically their whole lives. (It's a tactic to unconsciously lower the guard of enemies and prey, btw. Yay biology. You donate generously to the fangirls.)

**B.) **I stated Kakashi's date of birth and age and Sakura's but none of the others' for a reason. Their ages and dates of birth (and character profiles!) will be shown in some later chapter. All you really need to know now that Kakashi is oldest and Sakura is youngest, and they are all numbered according to age, so you already know the order.

Also, (as of October 4th, 2011)

**DO YOU, READER, WANT ME TO WRITE A BIGASS ONESHOT FOR YOU! YOU SHOULD ENTER MY ONESHOT CONTEST c:**

The guidelines are quite simple: you shall write a oneshot of any length, with a pairing that involves Sakura Haruno. It doesn't need to take place on Halloween or even in autumn, but must include some scene, however big or small, that is scary, and somewhere in the story you must include the word 'nightmarish.' Other than that, you have free reign.

Entries will be taken until Halloween (maybe November 1st) and then voted on in a poll during the next week. First prize gets a oneshot of their pairing and storyline of choice, by me. Check out my profile for examples of how much dedication and pure length I put into my stories, even oneshots. Second prize is a drabble, still of your pairing and storyline of choice, but I have recently proven (see "Urban Collage") that I can make some damn long and worthwhile drabbles. Interested? Get writing, plz. These guidelines have also been posted on my profile. Ciao~

Ta…Storm


	2. Second

**EDIT, July 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone every day at lunch in eighth grade. Every day she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, July 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with many friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

Chapter the 2nd.

Give yourself a big block of time, this is a long one.

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January 9th, 7:28 PM ...Kabuto POV

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_Daily Log. Writer: Kabuto Yakushi. Chief of Security and Surveillance. _

_Our Outdoor Interactive Trials are about to begin! Number 9 is about to be brought outside for the first time, and her ability to comprehend new surroundings and defend herself in combat simultaneously shall be put to the test. Though she is a creature of habit and safety and, very unfortunately, not intelligence, I have utmost faith in her. If, or rather when, she succeeds in evading all eight of her fellows (a massive step up from her usual evasion of one or even two of them). After this, she'll be moved to the basement for more intense combat training. _

_I also hold a small hope that she may even fight back this time when mobbed by such a number. I, for one, cannot get over what a passive creature she is, considering her gyrfalcon DNA. The gyrfalcon is no submissive bird, but Sakura is a black sheep. However, I have great pride in her for that. It cannot be helped. It is difficult not to feel that way about a creature I myself raised from a handful of cells in a petri dish. _

_But I digress. It is not appropriate to write such heartfelt words in my logbook. More to the point, Sakura is now outside. Sunset has come and just gone, and she is staring about in the dark. I have mere seconds before one of the males charges her. _

_Is it inappropriate to cross my fingers? _

_Daily Log. Writer, Kabuto Yakushi, Chief of Security and Surveillance .  
_

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January something…almost nighttime, maybe around 8:00—does it really matter! ...Sakura POV

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They're smiling.

They're smiling.

I don't like it.

Stop smiling.

They look even worse now that the sun is almost down. There's barely any light. I can see just fine, but the darkness doesn't make this look too pleasant. Darkness, dark men, a dark day indeed. This could be my death if I don't handle it correctly.

_'Forget them. Forget them and just go. THIS IS IT!'  
_

And like usual, I'm right. I have to go now. I have to open my wings and, and with a continued process of flapping, fly. It's a very simple process. My brain will receive a signal that says "open wings" just like it receives signals like "open mouth" and "lift arms" and just...do that.

Okay. This was it. Now or never. I had to have a running start, or there'd be no momentum to lift me up. Somehow I really doubt I can make my first flight with one straight jump into the air. Run. Jump up. Open wings. Flap. Rinse and repeat. This very simply thought ran itself again and again past the movie screens in my head while I kept watch on the other experiments around me. While I watched Kakashi take two steps forward_. _Oldest first. Zetsu moved, too, but to the side, and with his lips parted like he needed to breathe through his mouth. He looked like a dog, doing that. A stupid junkyard dog. Then Naruto moved, and he moved to the side as well. They were all, like, ignoring each other as they moved. I was the object of everyone's attention and my skin was crawling from it. Their eyes made me shiver and squirm and made my stomach churn with uncomfortable heat.

This ugly feeling had me practically tranquilized until Deidara, the last one to move, had settled into place, and once he was in his set position it hit me like a very unkind ton of bricks that they couldn't have trapped me more efficiently. I was now the center of their semi-circle, trapped half by a massive building at my back and with monsters at my front. I'd have to jump over and evade all of them to fly away. When I fly away. _  
_

I hope I'm not afraid of heights. That would just _suck. _

Neji was suddenly moving towards me, and I was ready for him. I leaped forward to dodge his claws and felt one finger whisk through my feathers. Then Kisame came like a train out of nowhere and I practically backflipped to get out of his way. His massive fist slammed into Naruto, who was behind me, and as I slipped away from them they began a completely idiotic fight. Kisame's roar of pain touched my ears and I was suddenly very glad that Naruto's claws had been put to use.

A feather, a brush on my hip. Deidara was by me.

I moved my foot almost in time to avoid one of his hugely long hand-tongues. It whipped the ground and hissed past my ankle, tore it like fire, and its impact on the ground sent pieces of dirt and grass flying.

Between Sasori and Neji, there was a slightly open space that I dashed for. One of Itachi's feet kicked at my own foot as I was jumping between Sasori and Neji, and it unbalanced me and made me fall into Neji's stomach in an awkward headbutt. He groaned at the sudden impact and was unguarded for a second. There was an opportunity there, in that second. I had seen it before, fled from it. I thought about it for the briefest of moments, and then took it.

With a hardened fist, I delivered the greatest uppercut known to man to Neji's chin, felt the _crickk _of his jaw and my knuckles, and with my pained exhale, he was tossed ten feet back. And he made _skid marks. _

I don't think I ever felt such an oil-and-water mix of joy and confusion as I did right then. Eight years of fleeing them, and suddenly...aggression. Strike. Bam. This felt...really...really good.

Sasori seemed to realize he was rather close to me and that it wasn't a good thing. Non-graceful for once, he sped out of the way as I kicked my leg out where he'd just been standing. I got to be taunted by sweeping my feet against his billowing coat as it swept out of range, too. And his face was just full of relief. Now all of them were staring at me with a complete lack of predatory glee, including Neji, who looked very hurt and was holding his jaw in his hands. All of them were regarding me with apprehension, wariness, fear. There were other words for it. I hunted them down in my mind: suspicious, watchful. Paralyzed. God, I love words.

My own glee was cut through my a strange sound in front of me. I traced it to Sasori, who was staring at me with an expression I couldn't place. But the sound, I knew. The sound was growling. He was growling. His tail twirled and curled about slowly in the air, and suddenly I was the wary one again.

He lunged. Eight years of fear moved me out of his way with an absurd twist of my torso and legs. His arm came down on me like a sword, and I blocked it with my own. The hit was hard and unmerciful and rang up and down my arm. My lips parted and my face formed a very normal picture of awe and fear. This was how it used to be. He parted his mouth slightly, too, but only to show me his fangs. I could see them just fine. I'd seen them plenty of times before. And they were way, way too close to my face.

I pushed him away, and his tail came down like the hammer of God. It scraped away grass from the ground and left the dirt smoking. The venom from his tailtip had burned it. That could have been my bones. But he backed away and didn't come at me again. I feel that if things were really back to normal, he would have. But no, he stood up straight and curled his tail, and stared at me with his weird face. His growl was louder now and accompanied by a smile.

Someone smack me for being so distracted. Sasori's weird staring almost stopped me from noticing Naruto. I noticed him, saw him right in my face, saw his open mouth and pointed ears, and fell to the ground. My breath was knocked out of me but it didn't make a difference. Naruto was on my legs. He'd almost gotten me. It would take him less than a second to grab me and have me. Like lightning I slithered out of his grip. Itachi made a noise behind me. Then, in the blink of an eye, Naruto was off me and being wrestled away by Zetsu and Itachi.

The others' voices were making sounds that could be compared to whoops and cheers. I ignored them. They were demonic sounds.

Then I got up, realizing this was an unusually opportune moment to finally get going now that they were all distracted. For some reason, I was aware that I might have a grass stain

I sat up very slowly, not wanting to cause too much of a flash in the corner of anyone's eye, and suddenly my nose bumped into something. It was Deidara. Down on my level and staring at me. Oh, God, I couldn't breathe.

Deidara and his one eye and his wall of hair were inches from me. This was so dangerous. He could use his hand-tongues right now and lash my skin off my own face. I would be in pain and then dead before I knew it and never see my flesh being ripped and thrown around like toys. It made it even worse that he was again wearing the dark smile the others had collectively worn when I'd first seen them here. It was awful. It was wrong. This felt so terrible and wrong.

He cocked his head like a confused little dog and the smile faded. The hand-tongues were coming soon. I couldn't look away. I knew better than to look away from a predator's eyes. It could and would cost me my life. He leaned in close by my neck and started…what was he doing? Was he _sniffing _me? What?

He was sniffing me! Ugh! Get him away! What badly to push him away-now that I think back on it, I wished I had prayed for God to strike him away from me-but chances were I wouldn't be strong enough. He was much bigger than me, and so were his wings. Even if I did wriggle away in time, his wings might wrap around me and pull me back to him, and I'd be trapped. I had to wait and just take this. I had to sit there while he moved up and down my head, stopping periodically at spots around my shock collar.

He didn't have one. His neck was as pleasantly bare as could be. He must be sniffing mine because he doesn't know what it is, and I don't think he's ever gotten close enough to examine it. Maybe my clothes are different to him. The male experiments all have dark clothing, except for weird, orange-shirted Naruto, and I was in my usual black shirt and white shorts. That had to be the reason. Yes. Yes. He was absolutely not looking for a place to sink in his fangs and suck out my bone marrow. He was notsniffing around to find a favorable place to rip away skin and expose flesh and veins.

That was what I was thinking when he licked me.

"_Aaah!" _

With speed I didn't know I had I was suddenly standing up and backing madly away. Deidara still crouched on the ground, licking his lips at me. That expression clearly said _'Yum' _and I was to say the least _having a fucking stroke. _I backed up faster and noticed that the others were coming out of their cheering episode and beginning to put their eyes back on me. Their freak smiles suddenly returned and they stopped watching Itachi and Zetsu fighting Naruto. I was everyone's target again.

This wasn't good. This wasn't good! And the angles of the walls at my sides were becoming sharper and sharper—I was being backed into a corner. This was at extreme odds with the picture in my head I was suddenly seeing: not monsters with tails and red eyes and claws, but me, alone, in an open place. My wings were open, like they could be only in my deepest, most precious fantasies. I was flying in the sky. I was. I _would _fly in the sky. I've had enough stalling. Enough horror, and enough waiting for the right moment! I just need to—_GO!_

I started running. Running right towards Itachi and Kisame. But I did not look at them and I did not think about them. I reached into myself and tried to exercise a muscle that had never been used before. My very valid fear that such a weak, atrophied muscle would not heed my commands was loud as thunder and I heard it more than my own heartbeat. But I did it. I told my wings to open, and they did.

All the male experiments suddenly gasped and dropped their jaws at me and this new sight. Through the stinging, glorious sensation of having open wings, I tried to flex them, to move them slightly, and the freedom in that was so exquisite I nearly climaxed. A smile the size of the sun grew on my face, so big it hurt. I smiled as I came within mere feet of Kisame and Itachi's clutches. I smiled as Kisame was intimidated by the sight of me, and took a wary step back. I smiled as I saw a runway open up in that new space, and veered toward him.

Seconds. Just seconds away. I was about to jump into the air. The next time my foot touched the ground it would give a great heave and push me towards the beautiful, painted sky. But it couldn't be so perfect. I couldn't look only at the sky. My eye was suddenly drawn far to my left, toward the Chambers building and the balconies there. To Karin's hellish, red head. Karin, keeper of the shock collar, had seen my motives. She had grabbed my remote and pressed the button. Before my foot had touched the ground again I was putting my hands towards my neck and bracing myself. All this happened in half a second.

Then I was being electrocuted like never before.

I crashed into Kisame and felt some of the electricity roll into him. Blue sparks danced almost invisibly around us. He reared his head back. Roared. Stung my eardrums. I hurt so bad, burned and ached and I hated Kisame even more for his blank neck, his lack of a shock collar. I wished I could kill him when he fell backward, staggered, staggered and then rolled onto the ground. Together we rolled several feet and crashed into the wall of the Chambers building.

The electricity became visible then. I could see blue bolts beginning to zap around us. They formed a net and trapped us in it.

My silence was natural, but it was difficult to keep quiet during this. This was like nothing, like no punishment, no hammer of God there ever was. I flailed my legs and my wings quivered. Kisame locked his arm around my shoulders and was so rocked by his pain that he probably didn't even noticed. His other arm tossed around with the throbbing pain until he clenched a fist and slammed it repeatedly into the greyish-white wall of the building.

Kisame was continuing to roar and yell. I widened my eyes as I noticed the wall beginning to crack under the pressure of Kisame's huge, strong fist. Through the crackling of electricity in my ears I heard muffled cries of the scientists. And I saw why.

Suspended on the wall above us, some ten to twelve feet from Kisame's flying fist was a grey, square box with numbers on it, maybe two or three times as big as my head. I recognized it as a power box, a sort of miniature generator which fed power into the building. There were many throughout the building. I had witnessed maintenance workers fixing them when they broke. They had to wear rubber gloves when they fixed the boxes, because they had massive amounts of electricity coursing though them whether they were running like athletes or corpses.

Kisame's slamming the wall was about to make it fall on top of us. Soon. Now.

With another agonized strike hit of the shark experiment's fist, the power box was detached from the wall and descended down to us.

Someone called my name .

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January 9th, maybe seven at night? ...Naruto POV

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This can't be happening this can't be happening this just can't BE! This went all wrong! They're trapped there. Kisame and Sakura are trapped against the wall and writhing and screaming. What made this happen? Why are they in so much pain? Can it be the shock collar collar Sakura wears? It has to be. She's so strong with everything else.

My tail was shivering, my claws, too. I wanted so badly to rip that agony away from my Sakura. Nothing should ever hurt her so much._ Nothing. _But I can't do anything now. Itachi and Zetsu already tried to cut me because they thought I was hurting her before, but they're fucking idiots. They didn't understand I wanted to be near her. They thought I was pouncing on her, but not playfully.

Kisame is in so much pain that he's starting to pound the building's wall with his fist. He is holding Sakura with his other arm. Kakashi must have sensed my fury. He put a clawed hand on my shoulder and glared at me, lifting his scarf and exposing his left eye and forcing it to glow red. _'Stay back,' _he was telling me. He was alpha and I had to listen to him, no matter how wrong he was. I had to accept that even he didn't know what to do now. If any of us go over there...we'll be caught in the current of pain, too. Be electrocuted. We'll scream and cry out, and Sakura will be even more scared.

She must be so, so scared. Trapped and hurting and being crushed. I want to help her. I _need _to help her, I feel it in my blood, the need to protect her, but I can't do anything. Nothing will help. Kisame bit his tongue and now he's spitting out blood. I don't know what to do.

Through the crackling of the pain-current, the blue flash of it, I heard puffs of noise from the balconies where the scientists are. They're saying stuff and doing stuff but I don't care. Sakura is suffering. All I see is her. I wish I would hear her, too. I wish she would scream so that she wouldn't have to hold in that huge amount of suffering in her small body.

I wish she knew that I've dreamed of her voice so many times.

When she came outside tonight, she looked so scared, more scared than I've ever seen her. It's worse than the wariness she has when we are together in a white room. Tonight, she didn't understand that we were playing, like always. Tonight she truly looked afraid of us. Kakashi had noticed it instantly, and was the first to move forward and start playing the game. When one of us gets to be in a white room together (the big white room, I mean, the kind for playing in) we always chase her and she always runs. We've done that forever. It's the game we play with her and everyone really likes it. Sakura plays prey excellently. She's quick and has many tricks and turns, and she always has.

She watches everything, so we know she's wise. She must know a lot of things. She moves like she knows where she's going and how she'll get there, and her face is so sweet. I thought these things the first time I saw her and knew then that I loved her. I tried to be nice to her, so she'd know, but ever since that first time we met she's told us by running away that she always wants to play Predator and Prey. And that's okay. It's a really, really fun game. And the scientists can't stop us when we're in there, at least not till the end.

Everyone has tried to catch her, hundreds of times. Even Zetsu, who's so quick to move around things and through things, never could. Kakashi and I are the ones who can get closest, though, and even we can never stay by her close enough to ask her if she wants to play anything else. Maybe stop and talk about something. Sometimes I run at her side and ask her things. _How did you learn to dodge like that, Sakura? Did you sleep well? Did you see that guy with the purple tattoo today? Are you sad? What do you dream about? Do you know I'm here for you? _I ask these things a lot. But she dashes away every time. All of us have tried lots of times. It never works.

Sometimes some of us are put in rooms together for other trials. Getting our blood drawn, or swallowing pills for experimentation. We try and talk then, and sometimes we talk about the fact that maybe Sakura doesn't understand us. It's a theory that Itachi thought of many years ago. He thinks that Sakura doesn't speak the same language as us. We can't think why that would happen, but...but it'd explain why she never talks to us and always speeds away.

It makes me very sad.

I feel so much worse now. We're finally allowed to be play Predator and Prey together, all of us, and it was gonna be the best game ever. And this happens and I can't even understand it. I just know that it's probably because of Karin.

I glared up at one of the shaking balconies. Karin is staring down at Sakura with horror in her eyes. I clench a fist and growl. I want to kill that woman—she's harmed my Sakura every day of her life, harmed all of us, and one day she'll pay for it with her own blood. She'll pay in front of our little one, and us. Then Sakura will finally be happy, and thankful, and she'll care for us, too.

CRRRK

_CRRRRRK_

Up above Kisame and Sakura's heads is a box on the wall. It looks familiar, and I do know what it is, but not its name. I know they're always full of electricity, and Genma makes jokes about them being energeezer bunnies or something. I tensed but the box was already falling down towards them before I could run to save them. None of us were close enough to run and push the box away before it fell on them. Deidara's hand-tongues could not reach that far, and if they could they wouldn't be strong enough to shove away something that big. Not even Kakashi, quick and strong-clawed as he was, would get there in time to stop the thing from falling on them. It was too late.

I couldn't do anything. I couldn't do anything but cry out for her, and I did. I shouted the named that Kabuto had called her since she was created, the one we know is her real name.

"_Sakura!_"

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WHO CARES WHAT TIME IT IS I'M ABOUT TO DIE! ...Sakura POV

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The metal power box came closer and closer.

I saw millisecond flashes that seemed to last for hours and tortured me just like the day they had happened. I remember one time when Karin had been somewhat nice to me. She was holding me hand—I was much younger and I had no shock collar at this time—and walking me through the halls. Ibiki was walking with us, and the two of them talked about medications. Karin said I'd be getting a new one tomorrow and it was guaranteed to burst my appendix. She patted my head and ruffled my hair. This is the first time I can remember not liking Karin. I was one year old.

The box was halfway down to us now.

Then Sasori came up, and I cringed instinctively. The first time I ever saw him. I was probably two, probably looked five or six. There were fake plants in that room, and they were ugly. I remember the way he stared at me with open curiosity, an expression I almost never saw on his face now. I remember he walked up to me and petted my head like I had done something worth praising. His hands felt very warm.

I think he tried to say something to me, but all I heard was a sound like a cat purring. It was a much softer sound than the snarling I knew him for later in life. It was close to soothing, _very _close to comforting, but at that age I had already been numbed and watched people stick their hands inside my open stomach and lift my intestines out. I didn't have it in me to trust anything. I made that clear by backing away and leaving his hands in the empty air. I thought he would stay there, but he moved forward. Started walking towards me. He curled his tail up above his head. Its tip look sharper and more awful than any surgical knife. I ran from it, and from him. From then on I feared Sasori and his poison tail.

Then the heavy power box crashed down onto us.

The metal smashed to pieces on our bodies. Shrapnel flew out and some fell onto us and pierced into our flesh. I saw one dig into Kisame's chest. He gave a heavy, troubled sigh and seemed to faint. _'You cowardly piece of crap.' _I thought at him, and I shot the thoughts towards his eyes so that maybe they would be pierced and he'd be blinded. _'You coward! You coward! You're leaving me alone to deal with this! I hate you!' _The electric current seemed to triple. The blue lightning bolts that had danced furiously around us before were now racing and double in number.

My pain became inhuman and raging. My heart raced. I wanted to die. **_  
_**

I had never suffered so much in my life. I couldn't keep this kind of anguish inside of me like I could all the other kinds I had endured before in my life. There were uncountable things I had been subjected to in this place. Painful, terrible, humiliating. I never spoke and never cried out through any of it. Not through drowning, being struck with rocks, injected with poisons and drugs, having my skin burned and my body torn open. But this was too much. This had to come out.

And so, I did something I had never in my life done before. There was electricity in my lungs, too, but I took in a quick, shallow breath through it. I felt agony in every inch of me, and I let it out.

I _screamed_ for the first time.

Everything around me was blue and white and loud. My noise was stinging and scratching my throat like nothing else had before. The electric current hissed and zapped inside of me and around me. My vocal chords were on fire. Every bit of me was on fire. The blue electricity whirred faster and faster around me. I screamed, cried, begged for this to finally stop.

"Stop it! Stop it!" I shouted. My throat froze and burned and ached. "I can't take it! Make it stop! Please! Make it _stop_!"

But it didn't stop. It didn't get better. The electricity was concentrating itself around my throat, and building. My fingers gripped the shock collar, and burned at the touch of it. My pinky accidentally slipped lower and felt the skin the collar was touching. Flakes of it fell away at the touch. My skin was burning. It burned like my bare hands burned at the touch of the collar. I hated this thing more than ever now. I felt the hate from my toes to my fingertips. I wanted this thing dead. I wanted to murder it.

My bare hands gripped the metal shock collar, and began pulling. The pain became worse. Currents from the shock collar and currents from the power box met through my hands, doubling the pain and having a goddamn blast burning me alive from the skin inward. I was starting to bake now. I screamed more. Tears came out of my eyes and evaporated because of the heat around them.

I pulled harder, strained, and groaned from the strain. I opened my eyes a fraction. Kisame had his eyes wide open, tears spilling and evaporating, and was staring at me in awe and confusion and a silence that not even his electric agony could break. But I couldn't look at him long; he was blurred out by the moving electricity. I saw a sea of hot white shot through with blue sparks. I felt only pain and heat. I wondered when my heart would just give out. I wondered if or when I would just die, and be free the easy way.

And then the collar came in half.

And everything, the pain, the whiteness, the electricity, the sparks, the heat, and the agony, just stopped.

It was all gone like a light switch had been clicked off. The faintest traces were gone in seconds, and left me tingling. My hands buzzed but barely burned from the pieces of metal they now held. I saw a few feathers from my wings had been sizzled off and looked like dry twigs. The grass where Kisame and I lay had been mostly burned away, and spurts of blue and yellowish electricity bounced around in the dirt. The wall had been cracked by Kisame's Hulk fist. The amazed faces of male experiments and scientists alike were directed at me. Nobody said anything. And that was fine with me.

Nobody growled at me or attacked me as I got about the business of standing up. I did lock gazes with Zetsu and Naruto, but didn't bother with them groaned and pushed my hands against the ground, trying to stand up. I locked gazes briefly with Sasori and then Zetsu and Naruto. Their faces looked mystified and even worried for their fallen comrade. I wonder if I should give them credit for having enough brains to look at Kisame and have a reaction. But really, I don't care. I only cared that it was over. I was hurt but going to be better. With them standing like retarded statues, I could be on my way.

"You can speak!"

Up on one of the second-floor balconies was Kabuto, leaning over the side with massively wide eyes. It was as undignified as I'd ever seen him. "You can speak?" he shouted again. I glared at him, feeling all the hate I'd ever had for this conniving prick come up in one huge, very welcome wave. It felt full of curses, too, and for the first time I let out that urge, too.

"Of course I can speak, you little bastard!" I shouted. My vocal chords didn't hurt nearly as much as I did when I'd first used them to scream.

Kabuto looked absolutely dumbfounded and that may as well have been medicine for how good it made me feel. I searched for and found the faces of Hayate, Ibiki, Karin and Yuugao and several others.

"You think if you people don't witness me doing something, I can't do it? You think you know everything? You're wrong. You have no _idea _how wrong you are. Look at yourselves. You were fooled every day for eight years! What a goddamn record!" They stared. They said nothing. "I've set a record, too. Eight years of putting up with torture most human beings can't imagine. Eight years of putting up with it in _silence. _You could never do that. If our positions could be switched, you'd never survive! If our positions were switched, I'd kill all of you a hundred times."

This laboratory employed ninety-six people and I glared at each and every heartless, open-mouthed one. At least, until I grew tired of the building's ugly, unfriendly wall and sea of monotonous white-coated people.

The other experiments, too. I was so fucking sick of them. I faced them. "And you. You...fucking mindless hellhounds!" They all flinched like they'd be shot. Oh, God, if only that were real. Maybe if I could just keep forming words, they'd really be shot.

"I hate you. I'd kill you all, too. With fire. Or knives. Something so, so painful and terrible, you'd feel the way I felt every time you tried to hunt me and kill me. And your little walnut brains would finally understand something of value: the fear that eats you alive when monsters like _this _are chasing you!" I pointed my finger at them and added one final flinch, one final shot, and I watched Naruto and Neji's ears pull low and tight on their skulls. An animal reaction. "What am I even talking for? Like you can understand anything with a grain of intelligence."

But the scientists, I wasn't done with them yet. "To think, I learned everything I know from you. It's disgusting, to connected to you. But there was no other way. I'd be no better than them if I didn't listen and learn." I waved my arm carelessly behind me, where the male experiments were probably making blank faces. "You'll never know what it's like to simply understand that your life is not a life, and that you need to find a way to escape it. To go outside and be free. Well, I did. I listened and I learned. I heard you talking every day, and your words taught me. I learned English. I learned long division. I learned the world map and I learned Rock-paper-scissors, all in my head. And now I'm done."

That sounded good. Really good. I should say it again. "I'm done." And I turned my back on them, the way they had turned their back on mercy and humanity. Now I was looking at the male experiments again. Kakashi and Zetsu were closest to me by a few feet. Zetsu's legs were shaking with fear, and even his ridiculous plant-thing that protruded up out of his shirt shivered. Even powerful Kakashi did not look like he could stand his ground much longer.

I stood up straight and opened my wings again. I felt the air on them. The moonlight.

"Get out of my way, devil."

And as I ran forward, Kakashi stepped back and his eyes went wide with terror. His fear gave me fuel, fire. Behind me I heard Karin's shrill voice: "Stop her! Stop her now!" She was powerless and so were her dogs. At least, I thought so at first. Ten feet away from slamming into Kakashi, Sasori stepped in front of him and I knew a strike from his tail couldn't be far behind. He would try and subdue me with his venom and keep me trapped her. Fuck him. His tail from the side just when I thought it would, and I ducked under it with a victorious smile. As it passed, I angled my wing to the hard "shoulder" of it and hit him in the arm and shoulder as I went by. I was surprised at how strong my wing was. You'd think the muscle would atrophy after a lifetime of no movement.

Whatever. I like it, and I liked how I hardly felt pain from the contact.

I heard the scientists' guns being fired, tranquilizer guns that materialized out of I-don't-care-where. I saw the red darts missing, and digging into the ground inches away from me. The other experiments, dodging the darts, moved in on me as well in jagged formation. All their faces were slowly melting into focus. I knew they _wanted _me to stay down here. But I sure as heck wasn't going to, whatever the reason they wanted. I forced my wings upward, ready to pump down.

Karin didn't have a button to shock me with now. Nothing was stopping me from taking that crucial steps. Nothing did.

My right foot hit the ground and gave a strong heave, pushing me up several feet in the air. Below, the felled Kisame made a bellowing sound, and Kakashi's claws reached up and missed my bare foot by such a small distance I felt the breeze it made.

My silver wings pumped down. I moved up. And gasped like a child. Almost too late, I moved both wings up and down again and felt my own weightlessness. One flap later, I had found my rhythm, and I was not far from the brick wall that surrounded the entire building. At this pace, I would easily clear it when the time came to fly over it. The effort this was taking and how strange and wonderful it felt and how my life in hell had come to an end didn't matter at all because right now I was FLYING!

I flew for two seconds and then it was ruined by Deidara. He and the splash of blue his wings made forced me to look to my right. He was getting ready to jump. I saw him leap into the air and reach his left arm towards me. I raised a hand, fully open, ready to grasp his face in my hand and crush his skull, when something...pretty damn strange happened.

My hand was open and ready to crush, but there was no need. Something jagged, big and blue _came out _of my palm. The sharp blue thing leaped out of my hand again, and I realized it was _electricity! _Before either of us knew what was happening, a prong of the blue electricity leapt from my hand to the black device over Deidara's left eye with a fiery _zap. _The glass lens cracked and sparks danced around his head. Deidara was struck so suddenly that he fell down out of the air and fell straight to the ground with a thud. Through this, I had time to flap once.

The other experiments looked down at Deidara. I was too far away to tell if blood was seeping from under the black thing over his eye, but I really didn't care anyway. I was—I turned and faced the sky, finally realizing that I had flown right over the brick wall. I had escaped Chambers.

I was free. Now. Finally.

I started to cry. I welcomed the tears and didn't dare to stop them. Far, far away, were tiny traces of yellow and pink on the horizon, the last remains of a sunset I had missed. I was tired, exhausted beyond belief and I didn't care. I also didn't really care that it was completely impossibly for a human being, or anything like a human being, to create electricity, that is, except the very, very small electrical signals that bounced around in your brain. There was an explanation for it, surely, and I'd figure it out later. I had a knack for figuring things out. Knowledge is power!

My eyelids started drooping but I kept myself flying. I gazed down at the greenness below me. Trees, and grass. Real ones, as free as me, that's what was growing down there. How odd that the laboratory was built in such a remote, green place. Oh, way to my left was a river, a real river! With fish and leeches and everything! What I wouldn't give to take my first free _bath! _

Well...I could look at this as much as I wanted later. Right now all I wanted to do was to fall asleep right here in the sky, or maybe down there, in a tree. But I knew I couldn't have been more than a few miles way from Chambers. I had to get much farther away than that. I veered away from the beautiful remains of sunset, and turned left, heading towards three bright stars. I smiled at them. They didn't wink back at me, but just the fact that they didn't disappear was enough.

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January 9th, 7:40 PM ...Karin POV

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"How could this have happened? How did we miss it? She was mute! She was stupid! _How in the hell _could this have gone unnoticed?" Kabuto ranted on and on, and in a way it was fascinating to see him lose his cool so dramatically. He would never fall this low again. It brought a smile to my face, but I couldn't allow it. Not now! Now, we have...we have to do something.

Kabuto was shuffling around in the recently built "courtyard" of the laboatory, like a lot of the employees. We had brought Number 9 out here a mere fifteen minutes ago. The Outdoor Interactive Trials were set to begin here. I had organized them, supervsied the building of the courtyard and selected the brick types and bricklayers, all on my own time. And now all of my work was for nothing. Number 9, our most prized test result, had run away. Almost as monumental, it was where Kabuto was having a fit about it.

Some twenty or thirty of my fellow co-workers stood in the yard inside the brick wall, examining the cracks and damages Number 7 had made to the building wall, or the seared grass Number 2's poison tail had created. Some were just too stunned to really discuss what had happened here, ignoring their duties completely, ignoring the fact that this could be the end of the goddamn world, just to look at some grass! Cheh! If I didn't need their help and if they weren't contracted by a form below even the federal law, I would fire them all and kick them onto a dark New York alley to be raped. Morons. I didn't see anyone organizing search parties or informing all of the other laboratories spread around the world, like they should have, if they wanted to keep their jobs.

Numbers 2 and 3, called "Sasori" and "Itachi" by Kabuto's annoying, gossiping ring, sat near Number 5, called "Deidara"...not that I called them by their silly names. These were experiments, not pets. Creatures and certainly not humans! Number 5 himself lay on the ground, almost unconscious. His blue wings were crooked because of the way he had landed on his back and he may have sprained some muscles as well, being a weak and thin-boned little piece of crap. Blood seeped out from under his special Ocular Enhancer V3, and we knew why: Number 9' had finally shown her ability. Number 7 could control the movement of water with his mind and Number 2 could control the potency of his venom, but nothing the experiments could do was so revolutionary and so impossible as creating electricity...from nothing. It had to be nothing, because there was no combination of chemicals or stimulants in her body that could create such a force. This was the biggest challenge to the laws of science yet.

And the source of it had flown away and left us with so much damage the annual liability fund would never cover it. Number 5 needed a new Ocular Enhancer, Number 7 needed God only knows how many corrective surgeries and medication, and there wasn't enoug money in the world to hire the necessary mercenaries to find Number 9 and bring her back unnoticed by the public.

Damn that half-bird little bitch.

"What the hell's wrong with Number 5's Ocular Enhancer?" Asked Genma Shiranui, one of the more annoying maintenance workers, who always had a toothpick in his mouth. I glared at him, and once again wished the fucking gypsy would just swallow it and die in a swamp. "What do you _think _is wrong with it? Did you see what Number 9 did to him? We'll have to make a new one."

The idiot still didn't get it. "Why, Karin? That looks fixable to me. It looks like only the outer wiring was substantially damaged."

I stood up and glared at him. "Because, _idiot, _Number 5's Ocular Enhancer V3 was designed firstly as a convenient little set of one-eye binoculars for his ugly near-sighted face to use. Binoculars aren't nearly so useful with cracked lenses, which I think is substantial fucking damage! And I'm not putting a new lens on binoculars with fried wiring, so we're making him a new one, got it?"

"Yeah...and?"

This man was definitely fired. "_And _if you can get up off your ass soon enough, you can include some topical cream or sealant in the parts nearest his eye that will sooth the injury."

"You...want me to fill the binoculars with Vaseline?"

"Whatever works, you imbecile! And do it fast, we have much more important things to deal with than this failure's injury." Genma looked at last satisfied. He nodded and walked off towards the double doors leading back into the building. Good. Now I didn't have to look at his idiotic face.

I scowled some more and stood up. I faced the male experiments, who sat around Number 7 waiting for someone to come and take care of him, even weak-looking Number 5, with drooping wings. "Listen up, you all!" They all lazily turned their heads toward me. "Number 9 has escaped and this is crippling news to Chambers Incorporated. If she isn't found soon, if she's seen in public, it will be ruin for anyone and everyone. People will be ranting about science fiction coming off the pages of books, experiments conducted in the dark, who did them, what is that winged creature, and when can we kill it? Where is the government? Where is God? None of this will be particularly helpful to Chambers' profits."

They were all looking rather bored. It was just shameful how much these creatures understood and how little they cared about anything. "First we're going to make an Ocular Enhancer V4 for Number 5. His injury will be taken care of, and Number 7's electric burns soothed." They all seemed to look a bit more interested now.

"Kabuto!" I screeched. Everyone turned their heads to look at me, which was really stupid. Unless my staff was truly as mindless as they seemed, they should know only one person here named Kabuto. The bespectacled Security Manager jogged over to me. I didn't give him a chance to speak. "Take Number 7 to surgery. God knows he'll need _some _kind of surgery to heal. Hurry up, he could pass into a coma any second! Pray to God that Number 9 does, too, and drops right out of the sky!" Number 6 keened sadly at that, and the noise hurt my ears.

Kabuto said nothing, but nodded and began gathering a team of surgeons, and well-muscled employees to lift the hefty experiment onto a gurney. I turned back to the male experiments, and said in a slow, condescending voice that they would understand, "He'll be fine. Kabuto's the most skilled surgeon this side of the Pacific. Number 7 will be back to normal in a few days."

They looked very interested now. Perhaps even a bit...cheerful. That couldn't be allowed. Next thing you know, they'd be moving from happy to lazy.

"Don't think you'll be getting a break and waiting for him! You're all going to be put through Second Level Stealth and Tracking Courses and Number 7 will join you later. All the Stealt and Tracking courses you'd been through in past years will be put to the test in this one. When you have completed these courses, with absolutely flying colors, you will be released from this laboratory-_thoroughly _monitored-and bring her back here. Have I made myself clear?"

They all slowly nodded, but for Number 1, who stared mournfully at the ground. I glared at him for disrupting the solemn silence that should have greeted my words. "Good! Now go stand in a corner or something till someone comes and takes you back to your keeping chambers. The creation of the new eye device for Number 5 will take less than a day. Your courses will take four days at most. It is Saturday, my experiments. By Tuesday afternoon, you will be out looking for Number 9. Is that clear?"

They all nodded, and an affirmative, guttural sound came from the literally two-faced Number 4. I turned and began a purposeful march towards the building. After shoving through a patch of chatting workers, I moved through the double doors went into the laboratory. After turning a few corners and making sure no one was following me, I stopped and let out an annoyed sigh. I ran a hand through my hair and gulped.

"Orochimaru isn't going to like this."

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Five hours of typing. You had better be so damn grateful.

Okay...just to clear things up a bit here's a few notes I think you should know.

Firstly, the amount of electricity Sakura endured was a lot, but I'm not really an expert on...voltage and whatnot...so I can't give you an exact number. "A lot" will have to suffice.

Secondly**, **I hope I explained the totally conflicted relationship of the experiments and Sakura correctly. Basically, she's been misunderstanding them for...eight years. Due to a total lack of ways for her and them to communicate, she took their enthusiastic playfulness as killing intent. Every single time. I guess they were just that into the game.

Thirdly, the male experiments have made references to talking to one another but all Sakura hears from them is animal sounds. The male experiments can UNDERSTAND human language, but cannot SPEAK it. A regular person would not understand them.

Well, I got to go to bed. I'll upload this right now, though. Having a good summer, everyone?

Ta…Storm


	3. Third

**EDIT, July 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, July 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with many friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

Chapter the 3rd.

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January 10th, I'm guessing about 8:30 in the morning? ...Sakura POV

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Kabuto used to say he found the moon landing incredible and awe-inspiring. Something to gasp and gawk at, to be motivated by. You know what gives me that feeling? A rock.

Rocks are so cool. Probably because I've never touched a real one in my life. I'm sitting in the woods touching rocks and having the greatest time of my life.

A little while after the sun set, I escaped Chambers, and I was determined to fly as long as possible before landing anywhere. Even when I thought I really ought to be landing, the never-ending sea of trees was intimidating. I wanted to go down there, to see and feel the vegetation, the things I'd been cut off from forever, but...Chambers existed down there on the land. Here in the air, I was safe, but on the ground, anything could be there. I only got myself to come down when my bladder couldn't handle being full anymore. With that, I was convinced to fly down onto the ground. I did it slowly, carefully, and alighted on a big tree branch. The feel of bark on my bare feet, cool and natural, was indescribable.

One call of nature later, I climbed the tree with my bare hands and feet and got my first splinter. I plucked it out on my own time, peaceful, undisturbed, in a cool and beautiful outdoor place with my wings lazily open. I had the time of my life picking out that splinter.

I fell asleep after picking it out, reclined in a tree branch. It was late at night and I woke up what felt like a few hours later with a spotted bug on my arm, and gasped. It was a real, live ladybug. My favorite bug, even though I've never seen one. Probably the only cute bug in the world. I was sad when it flew away. Next, I hopped down from my tree and explored the ground, but only for a few minutes. I was very aware that I couldn't take too much time here, as search parties were surely being sent out for me and I had wasted enough time sleeping. Actually, that meant I should leave now. Right now, just in case.

This time, I got a running start with nothing in my way, and _that _was pretty great. As I flew over the sea of trees and hills, I got to thinking that the Chambers laboratory was built in the middle of absolutely nowhere. I hadn't expected to fly over a forest for so long. In fact, I had imagined there'd be city lights around me soon enough. But all I had seen were a line of power lines that ran perpendicular to my path. Not even a cabin or a visible campsite. If there had been anything at all, I would have seen it. I have hawk's eyes. Literally.

Around dawn today, I landed again when I saw my first river. It was maybe ten feet wide. I dared myself to drop right into it, and sunk almost up to my neck. I rolled around and splashed and giggled like a child and it was a Kodak moment if I ever saw one. Memories of being forced into a huge chamber of water with Kisame floated on the surface of my consciousness, but I ignored them. I continued swimming around and having fun. Kisame was not here to ruin it for me.

I even decided to wash my clothes. I stripped them off underwater (and discovered it's a lot harder to get my wings through the holes in the back without someone helping me) and dragged them through the current. I saw blood run off my white shirt, and scowled at a tear at the edge of my shorts that looked to be made by a claw. But I didn't let that get to me. I was done with that life and everything to do with it. My next order of business was to rush out of the river, totally naked, wring my clothes and lie them on a branch to dry. It's really weird, staring at your own clothes and undergarments on a tree. I mean, seriously.

When my clothes were dry enough, I stood in a shallow part of the river and watched my toes squish and unsquish mud between them ,which was fun on its own, but then a bird landed on my head. On my head! And it pecked me! I couldn't stop laughing.

This lone, peaceful hour was pure paradise. I can't expect my life to be this good forever, but I'll always remember this time. Splashing around and climbing trees and getting pecked by birds.

In fact, this long and peaceful hour had to come to a close right the hell now. Somehow I had managed to kinda-ignore-kinda-black-out the fact that I was doubtlessly being hunted. Chambers was not just a single, strange building in the middle of a forest, it was a sprawling corporation that did tons of things, and this one lab was a secret. They created and tortured creatures like me in secret (thank Yuugao for telling me this). So I can expect some...mercenaries? Retired special ops soldiers? If regular people see me, there'll probably be police officers. Or the army. So...I better get moving.

So I brushed my nondescript tee and shorts of any dirt that remained on the, and jogged off into the woods, looking for a clearing big enough for me to comfortably spread my wings and get another running start. I looked a long time. As I ran, I passed a few animals. A raccoon in a tree. A little fox. I think I even saw a deer. I tried to remember what season it was that deer would shed their antlers. I knew it, I just needed to remember it. They definitely mated in the fall, but hey there's a road.

And there was. A wall of trees and woods was cut off at a harsh line. Just beyond a thin stretch of short grass was a road. The sky was open and blue above it, and everything about it was quiet. I was unsure of what to do.

In times of unsurety, I used to just sit and observe, and so I fell back on that habit. I observed the long, uncurving road with its intermittent yellow lines down the middle, and its deep black, speckly surface. It was the same as any road, I would assume. But it was the first I'd ever seen and I was still afraid to do anything around it. Then again, I better do something soon, because my situation right now is much better than when a car might come alone. Hopefully, I'll hear them coming and can dash back into the woods and hide. Or maybe cars are driving by right now, and they're all equipped with a GPS device that makes them invisible so I just can't see them. My knowledge of cars is kind of sad.

But the idea that one could come any minute got me going. I stepped warily out of the woods and across the strip of short grass, and then took my first step onto the road. It was a little warm, not much, as the sun had only been up to warm it for an hour or so today. It felt very rough and strange, but I think I liked it. I also liked my shadow that was thrown long across the surface, all the way to the other side. The top of my head touched the grass on the opposite side. All my movements looked really silly. One little twitch of a wing was like the movement of a giant. I lifted my arms and then became a giant, towering over the road. The thought of me being a giant, in anything, made me stick out my tongue and giggle. My hand made a little shadow-dog, a giant Doberman, and from then on it was shadow-puppter time. I made a rabbit, a butterfly, a stegosaurus and a lobster. This is Number 9, Chambers' smartest experiment! Now doing puppet shows! At least until she has to flee the government again!

Which might be soon. I ought to decide which way to go now. The road I was being stupid on went north and south, I deduced from the position of the sun. I had come across it from the east. Going perfectly away from where I had come seemed very obvious. If I came from the east, I should go to the north-east, or north-north east, or something obscure and not really traceable-

ONNNNNK

My head snapped over to the left, only to see a gigantic, red thing zooming towards me. I didn't even think. My wings snapped open of their own accord and my legs pushed me straight up into the air. The hot iron stop of the thing almost grazed my toes, and sent a wave of heat up to the rest of me. I hovered in the air, and watched the red thing, a truck, twist off-course, curve and turn insanely. I took in a sharp breath. This person was going to crash because of me.

It veered off to the right and started to correct itself, but the weight of the truck proved too much. It kept moving to the right, slipped off the edge of the road and down a small slope. It could have survived, would have, if not for the tree growing solidly right in front of it. I clenched my fists just before the truck slammed headlong into the tree with a thunderclap noise, and at last stopped.

Smoke started billowing out of the driver's window. My heart sank. Deflated. Withered. I'd just killed someone. I'd just killed someone and yet I had the audacity to actually feel relief that my selfish ass had gotten out of that alive and that person's hadn't. More smoke blew out of the windows and I saw flames coming to life. I heard the driver, an old male, cursing weakly in his pain. I saw another flame flicker into life towards the front end of the truck.

I wanted to help him. But would he want the help of a science fiction monster? Would I be able to do anything? I probably could. But I couldn't right now. Right now, there could be innumberable people trying to find and kill me. If they saw me now, they would kill this man, too, and burn his body in case the damage of his crash didn't. This is what I told myself as I flew away from him. As I cried for this complete stranger.

I didn't want to be there when that man and his truck got blown into hell because of me. I wanted to be farther away from Chambers Inc. when that happened.

The sounds of a ruined and burning vehicle faded far behind me. He was gone now, and his spirit ascending somewhere. I hoped. His spirt was flying and my body was flying. I was flying easily now. It was not normal, but it was comfortable and I knew how to do it. Someday I know that will save me from certain death. And maybe from more incoming trucks.

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January 10th, 9:25 AM ...Kabuto POV

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"There. Just don't touch it, and your eye will heal within days." I smiled at Anko's voice. She could be soothing when she wanted to. Or when she wasn't paying attention.

I was watching her latch the thing onto Deidara's eye. Unfortunately, his now-fried device had barely shielded him from Sakura's electric attack. The skin around the eye was burned and blackened, and from a test we can an hour before, its quality of vision is worse than ever. The eye is a few small notches away from blind. Thankfully, Anko pressed the new device over the ruined eye and skin and covered them. I heard the little _sqshhh _noise as the healing gel rubbed onto the back side of the device touched his skin. Deidara had something like an eighty-five percent chance of re-growing the charred skin, and the pain would be gone in hours without a doubt. Deidara let his hand go with a sigh, covering his Ocular Enhancer V4 with his lock of hair once more.

"I thought you would be more distressed." Anko muttered. "You sounded furious once the whole thing was over. Never seen so much emotion from you."

"It was a pretty stressful and unprecedented event. Sorry."

"That's not what I mean!" she snapped, and was back to her thorny self. "I mean, you were so enraged before, but now you're back to being yourself. I just wanna know what drug you smoked to calm down, 'cause I need some o' that, too."

"'Well, I just opened a can of pure, concetrated joy. It does wonders for me, always has." I held up the can of Sprite I was drinking.

Anko looked Deidara over for an other injuries, though various X-rays and even an MRI of his body showed no internal damage from Sakura's shocking him. One of things I had been losing my mind over a few hours back had been internal damage to Sakura herself. Surely, wherever she was, she was bleeding internally, suffering from broken ribs...in pain and crying. Not to mention a sore throat.

"Hey, Kabuto, does Itachi need anything done with his eyes?" She asked while tugging some of Deidara's secondary feathers.

I looked up from the table I was casually leaning on. "I don't think so. His last examination on the autorefractor showed no changes."

Anko plucked a feather from the parrot experiment's wing. He yelped and hissed at at her, and a crooked smile grew on my face. "When we were walking out Numbers 1 through 8 last night, before Number 9 was led out, I noticed his eye twitching. Itachi doesn't _twitch_. Even the amount of times per minute he blinks is abnormally small. It makes me worried that we're overlooking something. Maybe his vision is finally on its last leg, and he'll be blind and we were too late in noticing it."

"Because his eye is twitching?" I smirked. "There's been no such sign. Should I amputate your leg if you scratch an itch on your knee?"

Anko shoved Deidara's bare back, and he stood up lazily, following her to a door in the corner of the room. Anko punched in a code and showed a blank, green card above the scanning light. The door slid open quickly and Anko pointed into the darkness of the room within. Deidara walked in without fussing, thank goodness. Anko punched in another code and the door to Deidara's cell closed.

"And I'm startin' to worry about the experiments' sleeping cells, too." She said, sitting down at one of the two leather chairs in the bare, white room. "The codes to open the doors are only four numbers long and I almost lost Deidara's card yesterday. Anyone could have found it, thought it was the card to another cell, and used it. It would set off an alarm and everyone would get their guns and darts just because of the same kind of everyday stupidity that makes people loser their car keys."

As chief of security, she probably wanted me to do something about that. Do away with the cards and use only codes, perhaps. I asked her if that was what she meant.

"You _are _pretty close to Karin and Orochimaru. You can influence them if you want. I've seen you at work, man, you'd be a great used car salesman." Anko said slyly. "And chief of security, so yeah. How about getting different colored cards for each experiment's room? It'd make things easier."

At first, my only reply was to finish off my drink. The answer seemed obvious to me, but I explained anyway. "I'll try, but it probably won't happen. Orochimaru doesn't simply move from Plan A to Plan B because I tell him it's a good idea. People get the wrong impression about that. I'm not the little angel or devil on his shoulder, I'm just his little parrot." Anko found this very funny. "I remember when I pitched him the idea to give Sakura an actual cell instead of that crate she has. But he's dead-set on giving her that little box while all the boys get their own room." I remembered my own fury from that day, but it suddenly faded away. "You know...once she's returned, she may actually get her own room. Because you can't put a twenty-digit code and a security system on a dog crate."

"Yeah, well, he fuckin' better." My coworker said suddenly. "If anything, experiments running away should get him to change his protocol."

"Don't say that in plural. The others _aren't _running away."

Anko seems surprised at the firm tone I used to say that. Frankly, I was, too. "The fact that Sakura found a way to escape was our own folly. Frankly, her study was different from the males'. I wasn't working here when Kakashi was born, but I've read the records of his mental study. People here were absolutely mad about his brain when he was little. Testing it for every function and instinct." This was a bit silly to say to Anko, actually. She had been working here when Kakashi was born. She had seen his "birth" happen. "I suppose we grew more lax with the mental studies as more experimets were made. And when Sakura was born, the fact that we had made a little girl for the first time was so mind-blowing that...that I suppose studying her intelligence was second priority to a lot of other things we wanted to know about her. And that was a mistake."

The room was silent but for the mild beeping of the security system on Deidara's cell door. It was comforting. "Her brain wasn't as heavily explored as Kakashi's or the others' because we were too excited about her gender. Part of her wanting to escape, part of her getting a chance to do it, was our fault because we didn't keep a heavy enough watch on her mind. The minds of the others, we know all too well, but there's not much to learn of an animal's mind, is there? They eat, sleep, sometimes play, and play violently. They hurt each other."

"Can't ever get over that." Anko laughed. "Talk about playing rough. Hey do you you remember, um, about two months ago? It was during an underwater Lung Capacity exercise, and Kisame nearly drowned Sakura trying to wrestle with her?" She laughed out loud, unpleasantly. "She coughed up so much water afterward! I mean, it was like straight out of Tom and Jerry. Half the pool came up outta her mouth"

Her laughter trickled away and I felt it being replaced by a quieter, blacker humor. Anko's humor, the sort she took from watching the experiments cringe when scalpels were stuck through their skin. "You know, in less than an hour they're are going to start the new stealth training course. Your next security go-around is in forty minutes, right? Why don't you come and watch the Course with me till then?" I agreed.

Typing in a code on the keypad next to the door, she waltzed out into the hallway and waited for me to follow. She started talking about something amusing that Zetsu did last week, perhaps aware and perhaps not of the fact that I wasn't listening. I was just thinking to myself, that I was satisfied that this door and the one leading into Deidara's cell were both shut. He would absolutely be staying there until retrieved for his turn on the SATC. He was _not _going to escape like Number 9 had. I had to quell that terrible fear. If I lost it again as I had in the courtyard before, my reputation would be months recovering.

Anko continued to talk about Zetsu's antics as we walked through the plain white hallways lines with steel doors. I secretly let my worry take over and my thoughts drift over to Number 9's escape. I felt sorry for Karin, even though I didn't like her at all, because she was the one who had to break the news to Orochimaru. She had to tell the man who led this laboratory, who ran the entire corporation from his tidy little office upstairs, that his prize experiment had gotten free.

I wouldn't be surprised if Karin came back with a broken arm. Of course, even with a broken arm, she'd still be bitching orders to everyone else and pretending she was doing important work. Such was her destiny.

Anxiety got a subtle, stealthy grip on my mind. Slowly hypothetical ideas formed of how furious Orochimaru would be until Sakura was brought back, and once she was, his anger wouldn't die down for a long time. I saw in my head her capture by her fellow experiments, in their formation movements that they would be taught in a course this weekend.

Surely, security would be stepped up. Despite the fact that Sakura's wings had been deigned weak and useless, Orochimaru would never forgive us for letting a winged creature into a walled courtyard with _no roof. _Sakura would be wearing headgear for days if not the rest of her life, for the monitoring of her brainwaves and even facial expressions. The electrocution she had suffered last night would be her typical punishment for not pushing herself hard enough in a given course or test. The scientists in charge of her trials would be all the harsher to her, and anyone charged with feeding or bathing her would be merciless.

We would never let her go again.

This was a soothing thought. It was awfully difficult to not be worried, to not imagine how carefully I would watch over my creation when she was returned to us. I, as one of the chief overseers of her trials, when surveillance work permitted me time, would add mental strategy to her trials. Perhaps she could be taught to play chess and learn amateur strategy that way. The two of us could talk. It would be very interesting to hear her secret thoughts and opinions. To know them would be to make them mine, too.

Then again, would Orochimaru allow me to have such a part in her life? As one of her chief overseers, is a large part of the blame not mine for letting this secret side of Sakura go unnoticed? It made sense. He might remove my influence from her, take her away from me. Sakura would have a new overseer.I had molded her very cells, but she would no longer be my experiment. And while Anko was still chatting about Zetsu and while I pretended to watch the Stealth Courses, I would have to think about it.

The experiment called _Sakura _was mine, and even if the Director defied that, I would find my own way around it.

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January 10th, Probably noon-ish? ...Sakura POV

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A few hours had passed since I'd leapt up into the sky to avoid an oncoming truck and made it crash into a tree. I figured the police were inspecting that truck now—or the remains of it, since I suspected the small fire on it had only grown, and anyone could guess what a car engine in flames would be prone to do.

The driver was probably dead. And I felt guilt for that. I did. I prayed for him some more while I flew, imagining that perhaps his soul was in the air with me, and instead of pain and burning he could think of flying and enjoying himself. This was all, however, after reminding myself of the fact that he obviously wouldn't be telling the police officers and firemen that he'd seen a girl with wings right in the middle of the road. So his death made me safe. I had heard his voice cursing in pain after he'd crashed, and it had sounded old and raspy, like someone who smoked. This didn't mean he was a bad person, though. And if he was, and if he was a chain smoker or a druggie or an all-around jackass, no one would believe what he said.

That satisfied my worrisome side, so I focused on the side that was basically my survival instincts, which were, shall we say, a lot smarter than a fifth grader.

I stayed near the clouds, which were doing a good job of hiding my wings, silver in color like the present clouds. The morning had been sunny, but clouds had come in and overcast the whole sky within an hour. The clouds didn't look dark enough to make me think it would rain soon, but the grey-ness was definitely nice cover, camouflaging all of me except my hair: I was wearing one of about ten clone, white tees the Chambers employees had me wear—complete with twin holes in the back for my wings—and blue shorts that were probably designed for the athletic. I was practically a cloud myself!

So, being just a humble, unnoticeable cloud, I was free to look surprised and not bother to hide any part of myself when I saw huge spires rising up from the horizon. They were dark, steely grey and very tall and little lights were blinking within them. I could faintly hear honking noises and the buzzing of what I thought was moving cars. (Whoa. Cars.)

I was coming near a city.

_'This is it.' _I thought, trying to pump myself up as I slowly neared the bright lights and tall towers. _'I need to practice hiding out. Once I've been here for a bit, I'll know more about keeping hidden and taking care of myself in a big city. Then I'd better keep moving. If this is the nearest city to the Chambers building, this is probably the first one they'll search.' _I needed to get myself some street skillz, and fast.

_BOOM _

I squealed like a frightened cheerleader and fearfully swooped higher and higher into the clouds. Hovered. Blended in with the clouds and became invisible as could be. A large cloud to my right glowed silvery-white and I realized that the loud sound had merely been thunder. It hadn't been a chopper hired by Chambers to shoot me out of the sky.

If thunder was coming, then rain was probably on the way, too. I guess my earlier prediction of the weather was wrong. I saw that the cloud that was erupting with thunder was somewhat darker than the others, more grey than greyish-white. In fact, the thunder cloud seemed to be hardly a shade darker than my wings. If I hid out in the thunder cloud, not a soul would see me coming. I would be perfectly camouflaged. Hopefully, that near-impossible chance one has of getting struck by lightning would be similarly small inside the cloud. Planes attracted lightning strikes, but would I? No choice but to find out, really. And compared to what had happened to me last night, how much could it hurt? Maybe it'd give me a power boost. Plus five lightning.

A jagged bolt appeared out of nowhere, sticking out of the cloud, and then it was gone. I gasped at the sight of lightning—actual, natural lightning, and not manmade sparks from a manmade collar.

Something excited and anxious grew in my chest, a pleasant, anticipatory feeling, and I made myself fly faster into that thunder cloud. It seemed to look more and more like a temporary sanctuary. With another flap I had disappeared into a welcome mountain of thick, grey air. It felt _really _good on the skin. Hello, Thunder Spa.

Thunder, on cue, boomed above me and I saw the flash of lightning below, lighting up for a moment the city's outline. In a few minutes, I'd have to descend down and find a place I could shelter myself and hide out till nighttime. That's when it would be safest for me to move around, and probably find something to eat. I'd be needing food very soon, and I probably wouldn't be getting the food pills and synthetic meat that the scientists always gave me. I'd need _real _meat, vegetables and fruit (fruit, I was quite looking forward to, especially peaches) and a touch of something salty or sugary. Of course, the likelihood that I can get all of this is very small. So let's just focus on one facet of my future diet. That is, the sugary part I mentioned. Candy.

I always wanted to try candy. I remember when Karin used to open packs of Skittles and wave them in front of the bars of my dog crate. It had been quite a challenge to look uninterested when she did that. And she did it for almost two months, until Kabuto caught her and made her stop. Now, I'd like to make up for all those Skittles she taunted me with. Or even just once pack of them, I could totally live with that.

_'It's time now. Fly down.' _I gulped, hoping that there weren't that many people looking up into the sky. If there were, maybe they would think I was a bird. (Or a plane. Haha~) I thought of albatrosses suddenly, the largest birds, and tried to remember where they lived. Oddly, it was escaping me. How strange. How strange! Facts never just poof out of my head like that, but I can't dwell on it. I can only think, only hope, that if someone saw me, something with a ten-foot wingspan and all white and grey, they would think I was nothing but an albatross. Who got its head stuck in a can of pink paint.

I folded my wings inward and dove down, heading for a darkened patch of land between two tall buildings. Hopefully there would be an alley where I could hide out for the rest of the day.

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January 10th, 1:34 PM ...Anko POV

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_Daily Log. Writer, Anko Mitarashi, Head of Maintenance Work_

_Today is the start of what Karin has called __Second Level Stealth and Tracking Courses. All experiments, even Number 9, have gone through First Level SATC. This recently-designed second one is supposed to be twice as difficult. In First Level, all experiments were placed in the new Artificial Forest Room and told to find an animal hiding among the trees and plants. Fallow deer fawns were used for their excellence at still hiding, and tiger cubs for their own excellence at using patterns of sun and shadow to their advantage. Sometimes the experiments would accidentally kill the young animals, and they would often look regretful when this happened, probably because they know they aren't allowed to eat it. _

_In second-level SATC, the little animals are replaced by an experiment. They are tracking and hunting each other. This is a new experience for them, for the most part. When the experiments are allowed to interact, they would always do so in an Artificial Room, a room that is always close to empty of cover. The Interactive Trials are always about combat (except when Number 9 was involved, and then it was chasing) and always had a lot of room. Now, they have real foliage, real dirt and living plants to move and hide in. It simulates the woods of the American Northwest just outside. _

_The success of the experiments in this trial has been astounding. We had planned for them to each have a set time to capture each other, and if they failed, their newly installed shock collars would be put to use as punishment. Thankfully, they almost never need that. _

_This is the first time most of them have had shock collars, and I admit I did waste four hours of this morning studying the experiments' behavior with their new collars. Predictably, they appear to not be comfortable with their new devices and try to scratch at the skin underneath frequently. Only Kakashi is comfortable with his new collar, for he was the only one to have one for a very long time. He has worn them since he was an infant, even longer than he has worn his two scarves over his head and the lower half of his face. I would like to go on a tangent about why Number 1 is so attached to his scarves, and if he has some notable human emotions in him, such as embarrassment of his eye or collar great enough that he uses the scarves to hide them, but I have more important matters to move on to. _

_The SATCs will go on for the rest of the weekend, which admittedly is a tiny block of time to learn how to stalk creatures in the wild while avoiding the detection of all human society, but we have no choice. They're doing very well anyway, and we trust that the male experiments have no such rebellious thoughts as Sakura did. They will leave, capture, and return. _

_I would write more, but Numbers 2 and 7 are now in the room. The former's agility and the latter's strength always makes for some action-packed violence! Until next Log…_

_Daily Log. Writer, Anko Mitarashi, Head of Maintenance Work _

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January 10th, Exactly 1:56 PM ...Itachi POV

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This is the biggest mistake of our lives. I can't understand it. I can't comprehend it. I can't comprehend how we could think something so vastly different from the truth.

She hates us. She's afraid of us. She called Kakashi a devil.

It makes no sense. For years, we offered her solace and games to play. The nine of us were one pack, frequently kept apart, but who suffered together. But she didn't see any of it. It makes me shiver and feel enraged.

I want to turn to the wall and tear holes through it. I could. I could turn, run up to it and tear gashes through metal and concrete, and rage and beg for Sakura to let me fix this ungodly misunderstanding. But were I to do that, the scientists would surely think I'd gone on some animal rampage and would have to be detained for who knew how long. I would delay our release even further. And now that we have been promised to be allowed to go outside and find Sakura in just a few days, a delay of even seconds is unforgiveable. So I have to be calm and do what the madmen say. And they are saying something obvious.

"Three minutes and nine seconds left to find Naruto! Hurry!"

"Heartbeat, one-twenty."

"Where's the adrenaline? _Hunt, _Itachi! Go and _hunt_!"

They are shouting at me from outside this room, from their little indent in the wall, covered with glass and pompous and heartless as ever. And right now, Naruto is hardly acting any better. My delay just now was only theoretical. He is deliberately wasting time. For some reason, he thinks that we are on a set schedule, and will be released to find Sakura no matter what, at a set time in a few days. Because he's a complete fool, he doesn't see that his wasting time could make us finish our courses later, and that my way of doing things has no repurcussions. But this is to be expected. Naruto is always a mindless fool who makes me want to bury my claws in his hair and tear it out.

Because the scientists cannot understand me, I growled fervent promises to Naruto to cut and puncture his skin once I find him in this room of heavy trees and dirt. He snickered and I could see his fangs glinting under a bush before he disapperared into another, flitting here and there and here again. His movements are admittedly agile, and he uses his body weight to his advantage as he turns and twists. He knows what he is doing. His movements are familiar. They are like Sakura's movements.

The scientists would have a field day if I would express the emotion she could create within me. It is strange, I think, but not unwelcome. She has never been unwelcome. I have a memory of seeing her for the first time, in a white room-an Artificial Room, they called it, open and large for combat training-and I was young enough to remember the scent of trees and wind that once came to me through an open window. I knew by looking that this small and beautiful child had no such memories. She looked like a child of six, perhaps, and looked unbelonging.

The outfit she wore was a smaller version of what she did even now: a white shirt that left her little arms mostly bare, grey shorts for running, and wings that looked like costume pieces, for they were simply too big to really be a part of her (this last piece changed; she grew into her wings). She had large eyes, pointed at the floor, that had seen too much, and hands she did not know where to place or what to do with. Her hair color baffled me, but it stirred that one memory I had of smelling wind and flowers. Her hair, and all of her, smelled like wind and flowers and was tainted with the ugly medicinal cleanliness and droplets of blood that all eight of us had.

She was a lost kitten. I wanted to take her and comfort her, perhaps because she looked so pained, or perhaps because I am nothing but an animal in my deepest core, and even animals recognize little ones in suffering. I walked towards her. Purred. Offered solace. Told her my name and my friends' names. I told her to come to me.

She almost looked up at my face, but snapped her head back with down an unpleasant jerk of her wings. This was the first time Sakura tried to look me in the eye, and she has never tried to since.

What she tried to do was run away, and I immediately categorized this action as a playful one. She was unsure of what to do around me, a dark and soothing stranger, and so she started to play a silly game with me. I thought it was a good idea. I played Predator and Prey with Sakura, that day, and every day I saw her in an Artificial Room. I thought it was a never-ending game at which she excelled, at which she loved to flaunt her ability to dodge me while never looking at me. I admired her. I admired her speed and her cleverness, and even wisdom. She grew, and I admired her brave silence and her beauty. In those places between falling asleep and dreaming, I thought I would never catch her. I thought of her as belonging to me, and to all of us.

I thought many more things that I now know where completely wrong.

Fucking _imbecile, _I was. It's horrible. It's shameful. It's tearing me to shreds that we loved her and thought we knew her every thought and desire, and she wanted us to die, and somehow she hid those thoughts from us. And here is Naruto smiling and snickeringabove it all. Twisted, lazy pup. If anything, I thought this would be the one activity you would take seriously.

That was why now, stalking Naruto in the Artificial Forest Room, I felt restless, though I didn't show it. He was still making noises, taunting me. I could hear him dragging his claws down tree bark. Any other time I would have tolerated it, but not now. Now, we had a mission so important to complete that it made _me _restless. I stopped walking, closed my eyes, felt around my mind for an emotion that seemed suitable for now.

Anger. I found anger. And impatience. Then anxiety. The last felt strange and I instinctively shied away from it.

The anger took over first. I sensed Naruto in a low tree branch just above me. I jumped and easily grasped his bare foot in my clawed hand. He yelped with shock as I slammed him down hard onto the ground and set a hand threateningly over the back of his neck. Naruto understood that his pranks were over and went limp, accepting his capture and submitting. I exhaled sharply through my nose, irritated with him, and took my hand away from the blonde fox-boy's neck.

A few moments later, his new shock collar was suddenly being activated by some scientist watching us from the high window. Tiny, blue sparks danced around Naruto's neck. His eyes went wide and his claws scraped the dirt beneath him, gasping and snarling aloud with pain. I would feel pity for him, but he's acting like an idiot, and I have witnessed a much more painful shocking than the one he got, one that makes me uncaring towards this. I watched him for the new few seconds until the shock collar stopped applying electricity. Naruto lay on the dirt-covered floor, panting. I narrowed my eyes at him, and he appropriately looked away. He is chastised, but for what I don't know or care to waste time discovering.

Scientists in white lab coats and blue boots and gloves came in with a stretcher, preparing to take him away to rest. I stood and waited to be escorted away. Soon enough I was jabbed in the shoulder and I turned and started towards one of the two doors that led out of this room full of fake trees.

Eventually, with much unnecessary goading from Karin, I was deposited back in my cell. I sat on the cold floor and set my head against a cloth case full of what may as well have been hay. The material felt synthetic and ugly in comparsion to the natural dirt and trees I had just walked among. Outside these walls there were endless trees reaching their roots into the dirt. She was among them right now, and thinking of her alone in such a world stirred a mild desire in me to snarl. I wanted to be there with her. With my favorite "prey," whatever she thought of me. I would be with her soon enough, with the prey that was rightfully mine.

But more accurately, the prey that was rightfully _ours. _

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I finished writing this chapter at 3 in the morning, and I don't at all regret the amount of sleep I've lost this night. On this...school night.

I hope no one will complain about Itachi's being OOC here. Of course, he _is, _like, _incredibly, _but that's how he'll have to be for the story, mesmerized by Sakura and feeling his world is upside-down now that he knows her true feelings were the total opposite of what he thought they were. And let's not forget that this is my first time writing him, ever! And it's not like this is an easy character to write!

Ta and Goodnight...Storm


	4. Fourth

**EDIT, July 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, July 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

When I first wrote this (pre-**EDIT**) chapter, it kept me up till three in the morning, and it was so long I had to divide it in half. This and Chapter Three were originally one chapter. This means you lucky readers get a two-for-one chapter sale. You're living the _life, _you guys.

Chapter the 4th.

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January 10th, 1:36, I'd bet. ...Sakura POV

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Diving down like a missile with my tucked-in wings towards the ground to a dark space between two enormously tall buildings...didn't scare me like I thought it would. I suppose I was unconsciously comparing it with the more horrific things I'd seen over the years and picking the lesser or two evils. It could also be because I was remembering Genma talk about Superman and Spiderman, and fast and epic as I was moving, I felt like a superhero. For a little bit.

Then I passed the point of having endless air around me and my dive took me between those two buildings, and I realized, still about ten stories from the ground, I would have to open my wings in this cramped space to keep from splattering on the ground. I had seconds before I became jelly. I had to open my wings. Open them. Now. Now. Now, oh my God NOW!

And with a _wh-WHOOSSSH _they did open, ten feet from a dirt, concrete ground that made me cringe to touch down on. I wanted my grass and my forest back. Well, at least the one area in which I completely suck is smelling things. That dumpster over there and the numerous bags spilling out of it wont' bother me. I sat down by it, between the dumpster and two tall, green trash bins, and leaned forward to see out of the alley. To look at the people.

People. Real people with hearts and normal lives.

I saw two young men walk by laughing, wearing...wearing T-shirts, I think, and that was marvelous. I've grown up with the implication that I was the most casually dressed person in the building. Karin and Kabuto and Yuugao and all of the people in the lab, high-ranking or not, wore fancy dress shirts with buttons and expensive-looking shoes, with labcoats on top of them. But the people in this city aren't like they. I see T-shirts and jeans and untied shoes. There's a guy walking with a shift that has a funny boy and a dog on it, ("Adventure Time," it says? Okay?) a little girl who's skipping around in glittery shoes. It's all so casual. And it must be so normal.

Look at you all. What a pleasure it must be to wear casual clothes and be surrounded by people who do. I'm not strange because of the plain outfit I wear. I'm very normal. Not that I ache to be like your average American girl, but that was a comforting thought, to be like normal people and not like the scientists. And of course, once I finished thinking it, Ms. Stuffy Business Associate came walking by with her cell phone and her prim and proper bun of hair.

Beyond all these people, across the street, was a shop that had a display window full of clothes. I think part of its glowing sign was cut off, but I could read _Crombie and Fitch _and their clothes looked very nice. I saw a red top with no sleeves that looked very nice, very...cute. But it had a price tag that would make Karin choke. And it's not like I had money, or the desire to steal it, or the desire to go out there flaunting my wings and telling the gasping, gawking people, "Haters gonna hate!" No. Just sit, Sakura. No red shirt for you, sad day.

Then a blonde man in shorts and a shirt with no sleeves jogged past the alleyway and I caught a brief glimpse of his gigantic muscles. "Damn!" I said quietly. "How many hours a day does he work out?" A black girl strolled past the alleyway in a green dress and a jacket that atop it only went partway down her chest. I kind of liked it. I also kind of liked that it was a _jacket. _

Back in the day, the Sakura Was Once Imprisoned Day(s), I used to think about leaving Chambers and walking through a regular town wearing a jacket. If I pressed my wings tight to my back, and maybe tucked the long tips into my pants (shut up, it's all I could think of!) then I could...well, I could walk around town wearing a jacket and be unnoticed. Piles of consequences and potential fall-outs aside, the idea alone seemed plausible, and a way to stealthily obtain things like food, new clothes, or maybe a book. I always wanted to read a book.

So I passed more time while staring out of the alley and into that strip of bright city street. Admiring clothes and laughing, good people, and imagining the covers of books, and the feel of them and the crinkling sound of opening one. Sitting somewhere and reading a good, fascinating story while wearing nice, casual clothes and being completely alone. If I could adjust the temperature around me to something cool or even cold, that'd be nice, too. Somehow, I'd been raised to enjoy the cool and the cold.

This made my brain-train-station take me to another train-station of thought, about warmer temperatures. Eventually, the weather would heat up. Summer, completely unknown to me, would surely be too much to handle. Me, my jacket and my love of the coolness would probably have to leave and find a place that, even in the heat of summer, would...well, require a jacket. (Sakura: the only bird that Maybe Alaska. Genma once told a story about his boy scout troop who took a summer trip to Alaska, and had a snowball fight on the Fourth of July. There had been no way for me to tell him how amazing I thought that sounded. I want to have a snowball fight. I want to have a snowball fight on the Fourth of July.

So I just sat there and thought about flying north and wearing jackets and snowball fights in summer for hours. It seemed like it had been a long time since I frittered my time away with nothing but ongoing thoughts. The last time, all other times I had done that, had been in my dog crate. Look at me, getting lost in thought about getting lost in thought. This is what Karin calls "not having a life."I guess I enjoyed not having a life till sunset; the next time I looked up at the strip of sky and saw deep, full orange. No, more like red. Orange was Naruto, and red was sunset. So I wanted to think. Anyway, it was sunset. And for being mostly obscured by grey buildings and cityscape, the sunset was lovely. I'm sure it was always lovely. The stars I'd seen last night were probably out again.

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

Not the way I wanted to be torn from a sunset. Looking more on my own level, I spied a muscled man in a brown coat and stained boots. He looked unpleasant to start with, and he was frowning at me. He had three companions behind him, none of whom looked any better. Instinct prompted me to be quiet, even in the face of the knife the tallest one was pointing at me.

"I said what the _fuck _do you think you're doing sitting here?" The lead boy shouted at me, pointing a finger encumbered with a hefty, green ring. "This isn't no place for a cunt! Get your ass up before I make it _my _ass for the night!"

He was sounding really annoying, but instinct prompted me to be quiet and wait, even in the face of the knife he was pointing at me. Even when he sauntered up to me and gave me a seriously unpleasant view of his crotch. Neji suddenly came to mind, whom I had last seen staring fearfully at me with his kitty ears pinned to his skull, and before that, with a gaping mouth as I punched him in the face and sent him flying. But as I thought of Neji, the strange man's eyes were drifting from me and over my shoulders to my wings. He _saw my wings. _

"What're those?" His voice was much quieter and calmer now, even a bit curious. "So dying your hair fucking pink ain't enough? Some fetish your pimp has to make you wear angel wings, when you're sitting by a fuckin' dumpster." He was looking more and more like Neji, more and more like someone I had to punch in the face. And his own face was ugly enough to deserve it. Complete with yellowed teeth, two gold teeth, even one tooth that was just missing. "Some fetish. I think I got it now, too. D'you got room in your schedule for another man?" He chuckled. The noise made me cringe. He had eyes like Kabuto's.

"Fuck him, come to my place. I got six hundred in my pocket just for you." This one had an impressive-looking mohawk, and pants so tight that I felt sure if he had six hundred dollars in his pocket I would be blind to miss the bulge it would make.

"Back the fuck up, Lars. I get her first." Said Ugly Teeth. "Come on, bitch. Stand up and let's go." His easy insistence really bothered me. It's not like in Chambers I hadn't heard about how ugly the outside world is, how overflowing prisons are. The fact that this man escaped the law and is still running around telling teenage girls to come along with him for casual sex makes me want to bite his throat out. "I said, come _on. _I don't like your sassy face, okay? You can wait till we get back to my place and be as sassy as you want on my dick."

I was so done with this.

I started to stand. Halfway up, Ugly Teeth and Lars smiled at me. Halfway up I said, "Don't touch me, you ugly little _bastard_!"

The leader didn't know what hit him, at least, not until my fist slammed upwards into his chin. It was such a perfect copy of the move I'd used on Neji that I laughed. I kept laughing even when I felt his jaw crack under my fist. It was not nearly so strong, so dense, as Neji's was. The bone had shattered. With sheer force of stupidity, I'm sure, he told his cronies, "Kill 'er! Kill 'er!" Oh, please.

These men were a quarter of Neji's strength and a quarter of his speed. I dodged them like they were children, and they ran at me and grabbed me with all the accuracy of a dog chasing a flashlight. Lars came at me for his second assault; I kicked out behind my back and my bare foot slammed into his gut. He was tossed against the wall. Another guy used the distraction to come up on my side and clamp his fat arms around me. He was getting my shirt dirty, the nasty piece of crap. I bit him at an intersection of veins and felt the spurt of blood on my tongue. Some mindless animal part of me enjoyed that.

I had to smile. The fourth one was more wary, and came at me with two knives. He looked just like Neji, too, so I punched him, too. His jaw broke just like the others' and I felt glee. "Come on! Attack me!" I felt crazy, delusional. I had just punched some guys unconscious, and righteously. I felt really, really good. I could be a cop!

There were two men still standing now. One of them charged at me, aiming a knife at my head. His aim was pathetic. I raised an arm and moved it to the side, making the knife slash harmlessly at the air. He was unguarded for a few seconds, so I took both fists, laced them together and brought them down hard on the man's back. He grunted and went unconscious, falling at my feet.

The last follower had no knife, but a scar across his neck that had made him look intimidating before. Now it seemed like nothing. I sent a crazed grin in his direction, beckoning him over with my hand. I opened my wings partway and felt a breeze through them. He was close to pissing his pants, I was sure. "Come on, are you a man or not? Can't you take down a little girl? _Huh?_" He took a step back and then dashed away out of the alley and into the street.

I chuckled and cracked my knuckles triumphantly. Now, if I could fight the other experiments like _that, _I wouldn't have a reason on earth to fear them! If I could just stop being afraid of them, then my life would be so much more—

Something cold ripped through my left wing.

It hurt to move. The pain was like a live creature biting me, but I had to let it sit as I turned around to see what happened. It was one of the two nameless ones. He had sat up and torn his knife downward through the air and it was unlucky enough to tear smoothly, perfectly, into the middle and made a red hole that I could almost see through. My wing was bloody and wet now. I turned around, grabbed this man by the hair and punched him flat in the nose. He was still, and fell with only a rustle of his clothes. His eyes stared at the wall. I had clearly made a critical injury. And you know what? I don't care if I punched it straight back into his brain and the hemorrhage kills him. Good effing riddance, I've cleaned up the streets here.

But my adrenaline was fading, and I could feel the pain more now. It made my knees shake. It _burned. _I knelt down and tried to turn in some way that would let me press my hands onto the flowing wound. The first part I managed, but the wound bled in so many places and so powerfully...so powerfully that I started to not believe I had that much blood left in me. What a mess of veins that guy must have hit. How will I ever fix them? I...I can name and diagnose everything. But I can't heal this. What'll I do? And why the hell did I put my hands on this, anyway, knowing that human hands are full of salts that'll surely just make this wound infected and more painful? _Great _time I've picked to not be smart.

A voice from out of the alley alerted me. Awesome. "Treyshon Wilson and Trevor Bennett! You are surrounded! You are under arrest for murder, arson and drug possession, and are set for trial under the law of Oregon state! Surrender now or you will be shot!" Blood Quartet, we have you surrounded! You are under arrest for murder, intent to harm and statutory rape in the states of Washington and Utah! Surrender or you will be shot!"

_'Oregon. I'm in Oregon.' _Well, that's nice to know. It only cost me a gallon of blood and four unconscious pieces of scum. And a crowd of police officers, apparently. I could see their shadows at both ends of the alley. Them and their uniforms and guns. And suddenly I was terrified. Armed men were nearby. They couldn't see me in the dark yet, but they would. They would see me and take me back. No, no, no, you won't. Take these disgusting men, but no, I have to leave. I looked the only way that was left for me to look: straight up. oth ways leading into the alley surrounded, my only way out was up. So I'd have to fly with an injured wing, and begin my flight with no running start, but instead with a vertical jump.

I've been through worse, I told myself, and I can pretend that that helped a little. Sure. I stretched out my wings, ignoring the cold _snap _as a bone moved in or out of place, and the neutral _how curious that your bones are out of place and yet you want to fly, dear Sakura _voice that took a seat at the forefront of my mind. I ignored it via trying to decipher which bone or bones in my left wing were misplaced, but I couldn't manage the thought. I managed to make myself believe it would be easier if I started a little closer to where I wanted to be. So I stood on Lars' back, a few inches above ground, okay, that was good. Using the unconscious gang as springboards, I leaped up into the air. And fell back down.

_'No running start, no momentum, no big jump, no flying.' _Well, no shit, science! But God knows I'm a bitchslap in the face of what science insisted was possible eight years ago; I'm sure I could slip around it once in a while. If I can just flap harder, sooner, faster, or jump higher, I could do this! I could escape and fly somewhere else! Back to my Thunder Spa! I would just have to try harder. And I did. I pushed harder against Lars' back, giving myself a nice jump a few feet in the air. I gave two hard flaps before I actually began rising.

All the while I panted and hissed, trying to ignore the _snap, snap _of scratched bone and torn ligaments as my wings moved up and down, forcing bones to slide painfully against each wound continued to bleed and spill down onto the ground as I flapped more and moved upward, staining the raincoats of the men with the bright, bright red of my blood. Okay, that was not pretty.

Not soon enough, I was over the tops of the buildings that made the walls of the alley, and I collapsed on the roof of one of them in an un-graceful, tangled pile of limbs and blood spatters. I was trying not to move my left wing, for fear of scraping the injured bones together yet another unnecessary time. I heard cops scurrying into the alleyway and shouting to one another about a theory of how the gang members had starting beating each other up. I heard them talking about the blood on the backs of two of them, of the strange, dark color of it, the heat. My blood. They would take samples of that an examine it. Find me in no records, no crime listings. They might find something strange about it, though. I didn't listen to any more. I had to leave.

So I sat up and stood, turning around to the huge space of rooftop before me. Here, at least I'd have a running start. I tried not to think of the cold aching of the wing that I'd be feeling, or the fact that if I didn't succeed I'd fall to the ground from God-knows-how-many stories. I just ran, and a few inches from the edge I jumped, thankfully upwards, and pumped down. It was only slightly easier than when I'd jumped straight up off of Lars.

An idea came to me, a really odd one, but it was all I had at the moment, so I went for it. I held out my left hand under my left wing, hoping to catch some of the blood in the palm so more of it wouldn't go dripping to the ground on some poor, unsuspecting citizen like bird poop. It seemed so awful a thought to be walking along, walking along, la-la-la, and then "Aaach blood's falling from the sky!"

I flapped for several minutes. Always pain and growing more and more dizzy. I knew how much blood a human adult would lose before fainting, and how much a child of nine could lose before dying, but I've never managed to learn how much I could handle losing. Odd, what you hear and don't hear people talking about. While I was drifting mentally away, I kinda-sorta noticed that my hands were soaked completely red now. I took to wiping it on my shirt so I could re-fill my palm.

Fill palm, wipe on shirt. Wipe on shirt, flap, flap, _snap, sna-APP, _wipe. For goodness' sake, it just won't stop! How much blood could one damn wing have? My white shirt is going to be totally red now! How long before the shirt itself starts bleeding?

I needed to land. Now. Perhaps I could land near a park and hold my wing out over water (seeing as I wouldn't want to submerge in a water body in which urban ducks frequently crap in). Soon after that thought left the brain-station, I suddenly didn't care where I landed. I just needed to stop flapping my wings, stop scraping bones together. It sounded like death and made my stomach curl. All around me was haze and blood bombs. The blood loss was getting unbearable. I've never lost so much. The scientists would never let me lose so much.

At least I had enough presence of mind to realize I needed to find a place to shelter…a bush or something. So I was thinking about capture and doom, barely seeing where I was going, when I crashed into a tree and a branch tore into my right wing.

God above. It felt like fire.

I reared my head back and screamed. The branches couldn't support me; I would fall. I moved my hands up to grasp the tree trunk. Just this morning, I had been climbing trees. Just this morning and on a tree very like this. I reached out to the trunk, but the branch was very long, and wouldn't let me touch it. Then again, my hands weren't moving that much, either. _'What the hell is wrong with me? Why won't my hands work?' _My mind seemed substantially sharp now, for the most part, why wasn't my body?

The sharp branch didn't bend and let my wing slide out. No, it tore completely through my wing, leaving a gaping hole in the middle and a jagged tear halfway down the wing. Both must have been bloody as hell by now, I thought, something hard hit my head. It didn't hurt. Nothing hurt. I didn't hurt, and the grass I was lying on now didn't hurt. The building over there probably didn't hurt. But my arm was in the way so I could only see half of it. Half of the things around me. Half a world was not right.

Surely, I was underwater. I felt like I could move any way I wanted and not be stopped by something hard like the ground. I could hardly feel anything. The knife wound in my left wing and the tree-torn right wing were mere stinging sensations that went on and off around me, not in me.

Somewhere far away was my mind, everything I knew and learned and thought. That, as an entity, was trying to poke and prod me. My mind was telling my body to move. That was very sweet of it, very smart, actually. What a good friend my mind is. I should send him a card. Should I tell him about the shapes I'm seeing? The outlines of nothing on a whiteboard? They faded back into normalcy a long time later. I could now see the building in front of me with perfect clarity.

It was much smaller than the Chambers building. In fact, I could see the top of it in my current pose, laying on the ground. It was rectangular and edgy and had lots of little points on it. The Chambers building, which I had never fully seen from the outside, was probably perfectly square and grey like the rest of it. Ugh! No, this new building was much prettier. It even had a little tree growing by the door. Aww, tree. Nice tree. Was someone standing next to it? Yes.

Yes, my mind said again. The door had opened and shed light on the tree and on the little porch, and on a big strip of grass in front of it. A shadow appeared, a moving, warm shadow. It was a person. They were crouching down near me.

If I wasn't so dang delirious, I would move towards this person, look at them more closely. Because I wanted to punch them. Obviously me laying here like a drunk and my wings bleeding waterfalls is their fault.

_"What—hell—this?" _I heard a voice, a male, coming from very near me. It must be that person who's right next to me. They need grammar lessons. Geez.

No, I didn't want help from this person after all. I tried to tell them, but everything was slow, and hurt again. "Nggh...Leave me…alone…Leave…"

The person's hands were on my head, my wings, and everywhere. That alone gave me strength to shy away from them. I hated their touch. I wasn't supposed to be touched or handled. They touched the wounds on my wings. Both of them, very gently, but I twitched my wing away anyway. This person had to know their touch was unwated.

"I said…go _away!_" My eyes blinked several times and I moved my arm in front of my head, using it to support me so I could look at the person who was here with me.

I saw a completely unfamiliar face. It was a man, not so much older than me. His hair was pulled back like a mafia boss. Izumo would have laughed. And his eyes were...the hell? Purple? That can't be. He had a necklace, too, but I couldn't see much of it. I saw his collarbone exposed by his shirt and the button that was opened on the shirt itself. It was a casual shirt, unbuttoned and leaving his chest open to the air. And he had a cell phone hanging stupidly in one hand.

"Dude, I'll call you back." The phone was dropped carelessly on the grass. "Hold on! I...holy fuck. Here, I'll take you in here…" He said, and proceeded to try to put his arms around me without hurting me. I growled at him, trying to bare my teeth, pretending they were sharp fangs like Sasori's or Neji's.

"You'll be safe there. Just don't move. You're safe."

It was nice to believe that for a bit as I sank into half-consciousness, growling all the way. I wonder if I looked menacing. 

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January 10th, 9:01 PM ...Itachi POV

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It is time.

We're about to be let out.

In less than ten minutes, I will be hunting. In less than a day, I will have her scent. In less than three, I can guarantee she will be with us.

Hayate had opened my cell door, awakened me with a whistle only my sensitive ears or Neji's could possibly hear and attached a metal chain to my shock collar. "Itachi, come on. It's time to—err-_hrrah!—_leave." He said, with only one cough peppering the sentence. "The Director says we can't wait any longer. He wants to release you a day early."

He seemed worried that I would try to escape his hold. I did not care that he had brought in five workers with metal sticks and tranquilizer guns to escort me outside. I was not going to ruin my only chance to get my Sakura back. So I walked obediently until Hayate unlocked a set of double-doors in front of us. They were glass doors; I could see through them perfectly. Outside was a parking lot, hemmed in by trees. It was something I had only seen in pictures, heard about in Karin's complaints that she had to walk too far across it. I walked across it in no time (once again, she's complaining about nothing) and found all my fellow were already there at the opposite end. Somehow it was insulting that I was last to arrive.

Nearly every human who worked at this place was standing in the parking lot, chattering and punching things into their strange devices and laptops. Then Karin came up from within the crowd, strutting up as though she had _more _to tell us about our hunt. I was getting quite tired of her and her colleagues insisting they knew more about hunting than I. I would not pretend to know more about open-heart surgery, animal abuse or screeching, were our roles switched.

She one hand on her hip and the other held a clipboard. I heard Sasori suppress a growl and twist his mouth in a frown. It was common knowledge that he had no patience, and clearly he wanted to begin the hunt now. I did, as well. "You guys see this paper?" Karin said, walking in front of us, in the shadows of the forest's trees. She was probably talking more to her fellow employees than us eight. "This is from Orochimaru himself!" Was that supposed to mean something important to us? I saw nothing essential in paper.

"These are his orders for your assignment, Numbers 1 to 8!" The woman screamed. Neji's ears leaned downward, away from her voice. I did not blame him. "You are to search within a fifty-mile radius of this building. When you have searched fifty miles in one direction, come back here and tell us if you've found a sign of her. Or just… uh, make some urgent growl or something."

I heard the black half of Zetsu snort at her ignorance and stupidity. We had been told of this already, through a series of simple pictures, signs and words, by many other scientists and workers before. We had all heard this same assignment nearly dozen times in the last day or so.

"If nothing is found within fifty miles, then you'll rest shortly here and go out again, increasing your radius to one hundred miles. By the time you have increased to that second radius, some of us will be helping you in your search and some of us will be posting rewards to our clients and asking around for witnesses of Number 9. All other laboratories round the world are aware of the situation and are willing to help us if they spot her. It is _essential _that we spot her."

Even now, when we truly did need to hurry, Karin took her time in explaining, in unnecessary detail, what we had already heard so many times. I faked the fact that I was listening to her while picturing Sakura flying, wondering what places she would like to stop and rest. Likely a place with water. Kisame had told me countless times, in his carefree, open voice that only I heard, that he had seen her swimming when he was placed in a tank with her. She had apparently been enjoying herself until she took sight of him.

_'A river. A lake.' _I had only left this building to be let into the Chambers Building's backyard with the rest of my companions to chase Sakura. I knew exactly how this world worked, its vegetation, its climate, its people, its technology, but I was not familiar with the land. I would have to waste time searching for places with water and memorizing their locations.

"—to be tested again for rebellious, violent brainwaves, which of course will be subdued via lorazepam, if need be great enough, and expelled when found. Now…you all know your assignments."

She appeared to finally be nearing the end of her speech.

I felt Sasori's eyes on me. I briefly met his gold gaze as he nodded his head towards a section of the woods just in front of me. He was telling me which direction to go in. Karin must have assigned directions to us while I was not listening to her. I could only give a slow blink in return. He would have no trouble understanding it.

"Now, GO!"

Before she had even finished the word, every last one of us had sped into the trees.

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Did you enjoy your two-for-one sale? The name of the city Sakura and her rescuer (omg who is he D:) are residing in will be revealed next chapter. Before editing this story, I had a small contest to see who could guess which state this story was taking place in. This was a time I did not directly state that it was Oregon. But you can still guess the city if you like ^^

You see, one of the things I'm trying to accomplish in this story is add an element of realism by making it take place in _real _places. These cities, these forests, these roads, heck, if I can find some, these _streets _exist for real. All done with Mapquest ;D

Ta...Storm, who is still awake at 3:20 AM


	5. Fifth

**EDIT, July 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, July 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

Btw, in this chapter, Karin will go all "Exposition no Jutsu!" and give you some information on Chambers, i.e., the reason they can raise mutant experiments with constant funding, secrecy and lack of media attention.

Chapter the 5th.

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January 10th, time unknown...guhh ...Sakura POV

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What an odd thing, to wake up to shapes that move. Triangles that evolve into squares. And trapezoids. And houses. This is just crazy. What's also crazy is that the guy who had found me had picked me up. I could see his arms. Tan. Big. But I tried to look at his eyes, which had been purple the last time I looked, and now they were red and blue. At the same time. It was distracting. Distracting me from being rightfully hostile to him. This fucker needed to put me down _yesterday. _

Just as I was thinking that (_yesterday_) the man put me down. There was something soft beneath me, a buoyant, pleasant surface and I had never felt anything like it. I felt that surface beneath me, prodded at it slightly with my fingertips, and everything else started to come into focus once more. I could see more realistic shapes around me. The stranger's voice tried to break through to to me.

_"…Stay—cousin—help for—wait…"_

He was talking to me, I think, and I tried to focus and listen, but found my ears full of a humming sound that was blocking all other noises. I growled and forced my lips into a hateful frown, baring my fangs at him. I don't think I have fangs, barely-pointed canines at best. Certainly not what Naruto or Kisame could show you.

It came to my attention that the temperature around me had risen. All around me was warm air and it felt strange. Maybe it would be pleasant in another real or in another mind, but it was interference for me. At that point the dazed and confused part of my mind fell flat on its face and the regular, tough logistics department came roaring back. I needed rest, it said, I said. Rest, a blood transfusion, stitches and food, and a clear head to deal with this stranger who had set me down on his couch, and then get away from him. If I wasn't alone, I wasn't safe.

So I took in a deep breath and forced my body to take on a calm, sleepy look. It wasn't hard. Under this facade, I began forcing power and strength into my muscles. The numb, unmoving feeling barely began to melt away around my shoulders, where I was pushing strength the hardest. I twitched them, trying to get them to move properly. The process was so irritatingly slow and hard it seemed pointless.

But it would work.

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January 10th, 8:48 PM ...Hidan POV

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You won't believe, won't _fucking believe_ what happened tonight. You can't even guess. It is hardly within the power of _God _to guess what I found in my front yard tonight.

It was a bleeding girl, laying next to the apple tree in my front yard. She looked young, not much younger than me, and she had some kind of rubble on her back. And then I thought, no it's not rubble, it's, dogs or raccoons or something, _eating _her, and since and since it was dark and the streetlamps were out of power for the past two days, I couldn't see shit, so maybe it was dogs or raccoons. But after a few seconds I realized they were god-fucking _wings. _On a _person. _

I didn't know why I started walking over to her. I was having a perfectly average phone conversation with my cousin and I could have passed it off from not getting enough damn sleep. That seemed totally reasonable since the thing in my front yard was totally right out of a video game that I'd played at a demo at Best Buy last week. Maybe I'd played games so much I was finally losing my effin' mind and starting to see herds of Charizard and the spirit of Aerith in my front yard. But I walked over to the girl anyway.

She was panting in a limp heap at the foot of the tree. One wing had a hole through the middle, and the other had a larger tear that extended all the way down. Both wounds were bleeding like shit, and her white shirt—I think it started as white—was...well, it was so soaked in blood I couldn't tell what color it was supposed to be. A teenage girl can't have that much blood in her. How could all of it be hers?

"What the hell is this?" I whispered. It's not like I expected an answer, but I got one. A vague one. Straight out of a video game, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck and on my arms rise and shiver. I also felt something that was, I don't know, more emotional than stiff hairs, that prompted me to help this person. Yeah, I'd help 'em. For _some _fucking reason. I _would _help this person. For some fucking reason.

Her eyes were glazed with pain. I noticed that when she looked at me and growled out, "Nggh…Leave me…alone…Leave…"

For a second, I could barely believe she was talking to me. She was sentient. She could talk.

So I looked at the injury on her left wing. It was a stab wound just like the other one. I would know. I tried to touch it, to see if any of the wound was covered by feathers (_Jesus Christ she has FEATHERS._) and she made a groaning sound that was full of pain, so I withdrew my hand super fast. I could see without much study, anyway, that it was a pretty jagged hole, right through feather and flesh. The other one was uglier, but not bleeding quiet as bad. This one looked like it had started the same, with a harsh stab through the wing, but higher up this time, and the attacker had dragged their weapon down, all the way down, till it tore through bone and meat and ripped its way back into the air again. Fuck. Fuck, this time last year, this would have gotten me hard.

"I said…go _away_!" The girl pushed her arms against the ground and moved herself as up, so her face was closer to mine. She stared at me with weird, hazy eyes and looked me over. I stared back. Just stared. Though my eyes were locked on hers, my mind was focused on her hair. I mean, even if it was just one hundred percent bloodstained, it was god-fucking _pink. _I had a pink-haired girl with bird wings on my front lawn, bleeding to death and growling at me. I was pretty damn surprised myself when I didn't start cursing then and there. Seriously, I should've!

_"…Hidan? Hidan? Hey! …Say something!" _

"Kakuzu, I'll call you back." Then I dropped the phone on the grass and left it there. "…Hold on! I'll take you in the house…" She just kept up with her goddamned growling while I felt around her body—Heh, nice—for a place where I could put my hands without making her scream aloud with pain and wake someone up.

"You'll be safe there. Just don't move. You're safe." I didn't even know if that was me talking. What the fuck ever.

First I tried around the hips, but she bucked and made me jump back and accidentally made my hand touch her wing. She growled louder but didn't scream. _Good. _Then I thought of dragging her by her feet, but then thought that, not only would that look fucked up to drag an incapiticated girl into my house at night, but her wings would probably drag through the front door, and that _would _make her scream. God, I hate problem solving. Too much work.

Several very fucking tedious minutes later, I decided to put my hands under her arms and put her over my shoulder the same way some old farmer would carry a sack of potatoes. She appeared to be only partway conscious, because when I started pulling her up onto my shoulder, her feet scraped against the grass, but she made no sound or pained protest. I walked over to my front door, hoping that she wasn't bleeding all over my front yard. That would _suck _to explain to the neighbors, and I wasn't in the mood to find the lost water hose to wash it away.

_'But wasn't she already in a puddle of blood when I first saw her?' _Well, fuck.

I squeezed us through the front door, trying not to get the wings to touch the wooden frame. I looked back and saw a trail of bright red leading from the base of the apple tree in my yard all the way up to my door. So, later tonight I'd be going on a magical and happy journey to find to lost and wonderful hose, Chaaaarlieeee. Hoo-fuckin'-ray.

Just then I felt a real rush of worry and anxiety and I realized, really, really realized that I was carrying a bleeding girl with wings and there was a trail of her blood on my front lawn. I guess fear had decided to wait until I was in too deep in this matter to set into my head. But, whatever, the point is, right then, I felt really, really freaked. I suddenly wanted to drop her on the floor and run upstairs and close my door and watch a movie. The Hangover. Yeah.

My foot twitched and I looked around for a place I could put her. The kitchen was to my right—sure, put her on the counter and make it look like you're getting ready to fucking rape her!—the stairs right in front of me—I am _not _getting the guest bedroom blood-soaked for this birdlady I don't even know—and the living room with the big couch in it was to my left.

Couch? Sure. What the hell. It's not like it's that great, anyway.

So I turned left and set her on the couch, in front of the coffee table and the TV set. I started thinking, for probably the first time, what I could do to help her besides take her in my house. For a couple seconds, my mind was pretty blank and I felt totally retarded. The police would see blood on my lawn, come into my house, see a bleeding, unconscious girl and I'd go to jail. The end. No matter what it really was, odds were, it'd look like I was raping her.

Then I actually thought of something. A plan. A good one. Seriously! "Stay and rest on the couch, okay? I'll call my cousin and I'll have him…I'll have him help you. He knows how to stitch, he can fix your wounds. Wait here, I'm gonna call him."

So I went outside and grabbed my phone from off the lawn where I'd dropped it a couple minutes before. I wasn't surprised at all to find my cousin, Kakuzu, yelling at me.

_"—nd if you're smoking another damn cigarette, Hidan, I'll skin you alive and feed you to a giraffe! This has got to be the ten__th__ time you've just dropped out of some phone conversation in one month. How many times do I have to tell you to stay __on_ _the phone when someone is talking to you?_ _Are you even still there? Will you say something, you deadbeat fuck!"_

"You know, I've heard this all before." I tried to act tired and casual and...and, you know. Okay.

_"…and what the hell does _that _mean?" _He sounded much calmer now.

"I mean you always threaten me when I take a break from talking on the phone. What's wrong with going to the damn bathroom if I have to?"

_"Bathroom breaks don't take that fucking long, Hidan! What the hell were you really doing? Tell me!" _

"I'll tell you if you stop screaming!" You couldn't tell Kakuzu shit when he was screaming. "Did you take your pill today? Wait, did the prescription say to take one or two?"

_"Like you can say shit when you're on anger meds. __I just hate it, _hate it, _when, first, you force me to stop talking to Konan to talk to you about your lost textbook, and then it burns into a tangent about absolutely nothing, and then you leave in the middle to brush your gay hair or lift weights. It's not just annoying, Hidan, it's _stupid. _Now what were you doing?" _

Okay, so now I really felt something ugly in my stomach. I wished I could just puke it up and flush it. "Uh, well, I really, really need you to come home, and I mean right now. I have something that needs to be stitched up. Badly. So can you get done at the pawn shop and come back?"

_"Got another dress shirt you want me to sew up for you, you woman?" _

"You're the one who sews, you freak, _you're _a woman! And no, it's not a shirt. It's a person."

_"What the fu—" _

I hung up before he could scream at me again. And then I tried not to laugh.

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January 10th, 9:49 PM ...Karin POV

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Waiting for the elevator is so tedious. Especially when you need to go front the second floor to the ninth, where my office was. You know what I mean? I mean, honestly! And all I need there is my personal labtop. It was Kabuto's idea for everyone to get together in one room, the cafeteria, and collectively send out emails and notices about Number 9's disappearance, (official ones, not just the frantic one-liners that have been going around the online community since yesterday). Add to that, we need to post rewards. Descriptions of all our experiments, so anyone we hire can know to hunt the pink-haired flyer and not the blode one, to let the males free and chain the female, and so on. But the part about doing all this in the same room as everyone else so you can shout out news to everyone was what was important. It was a good plan. Kabuto had made it up. I had not.

That's why I was frowning while I stood tapping my foot in the elevator to my office. Kabuto had beaten me to the plan, and a portion of the credit would go to him if anything was found online while we worked. I _needed _credit like that. I needed it for Orochimaru, the Director. I had broken the news to him yesterday, just a little while after Number 9 had escaped.

I calmly explained it to him in a nutshell—"Mr. Director, Experiment Number 9 escaped and flew away"—and he had picked up a vase of prized venus fly trap plants and thrown them at the wall. I felt fourteen and hated again. He had shouted at me, made furious orders for the other experiments to practice their stealth and hunting skills and have them out searching for Number 9 in less than three days. Then he had thrown a clipboard and whatever papers were on it straight onto the wall and yelled at me to leave his office a moment thereafter. I did. Quickly.

If I didn't do something good for the operation of Number 9's capture, something horrible would happen to me. I had been Orochimaru's most trusted worker, higher up in ranks than even Kabuto, and my position in this company was one of much power. I needed to keep that position. I needed to be known as someone of power and someone who could easily control that power.

If I could do that, someday _I _would rise to the role of Director, and the whole of the corporation would be a throne from which I could decree anything I wished. Not that I'd be a tyrant or anything.

This company is one known all around the _world_, you know. I've been working here for eight years now but I know the history of this incorporation like the back of my hand. Chambers has a hand in every business and industry in the world. Food chains, clothing wholesalers, oil companies and everything in between. There's a reason Wal-mart's general profits have decreased in the past decade, and ours have...uh, _not._

It's all so successful because of the genius of Orochimaru. When he was much younger, he invested and leeched money from as money companies he could afford to take stock in (and some he couldn't) and had a habit of disappearing if any of them went bankrupt. Nowadays, anyone who tries to do that to this corporation is strung up by his balls, and if he's hiding cash, we'll cut open his stomach to find it and everything else of value he has. Metaphorically.

In between the time of his investing games and "nowadays" Orochimaru started up his own sole proprietorship, Chambers, in early nineteen eighty-one, and it quickly expanded into a corporation allegedly owned by a grand board of directors, truly owned by Orochimaru, who held the board's puppet strings in his hands. By fourth of July in the following year, our company was beginning to butt heads with Wal-mart, and for good damn reason: It had _everything._

If your child needed a physical before football season, you went to Chambers. If you wanted to publish a book you wrote, you went to Chambers. If you wanted an abortion, you went to Chambers (this is our biggest complaint nowadays...ugh...). When I was ten years old and told my parents I wanted a puppy, so we went to Chambers and got one. Everything that the average person could possibly want or have done for them could be found at the local Chambers Inc. store. And of course, benevolent company that we are, we have plenty of charities pumping food and necessities to third-world countries. My old glasses are now in the care of a happy, near-sighted Nigerian girl, you know.

At some point in time (I don't think someone such as _you _would know or care) it became illegal to monopolize an industry, and several of our critics attempted to use this to throw the corporation under the bus. We quickly turned the tables by publicly reminded the walnut-brained public that stores such as K-Mart and Target were in the business together, racing towards a new tomorrow and a lot of other happy bullcrap. Around the same time, Orochimaru's friends in the House and in the English Parliament were snickering mischievously at our success. Would you believe Kelsey's Law may soon be federal law because of our efforts?

How odd to think that such a grand and helpful corporation, bent on spreading happiness in all types of packages to consumers round the world would have anything behind closed doors! Just plain ridiculous to think Chambers would use its excess riches to fund a dozen hidden laboratories spread all around the world, inside of which nothing takes place except the creation and grooming of _war weapons. _

God, I love it!

Each of our nine experiments, each of the experiments created in the other (um, fucking incompetent) labs around the world are nothing but rich breeding grounds for genetic and biological weapons knowledge to grow and flourish like...shall I say, a virus? Once again, this time in winter of nineteen eighty-two, Orochimaru took a look at the world around him to find what he could add to aid it. He saw it filled with countless wars large and small, famous and unknown, each full of tears and anguish that tore children from families and families from homes and people from life.

Why, it's nothing short of noble that those of us working in these laboratories risk discovery and arrest and life prison sentences _daily _in merely coming to work. Our work is for the good of the country, of all countries, and one day we'll be able to know our research has been honed and finished, and the world will thank us.

For now, though, we're stuck in secrecy, with only a thousand or so people around the world aware of our clandestine research. It was begun again in the eighties with the construction of the laboratories which were never officially built and seen only by builders who would later go on to work inside the lab they had helped to make, thus sealing their loyalty. There's one in Germany's Black Forest, one disguised as a warehouse outside of Sydney, Australia, and even a small underwater one located a mile or so off the Italian coast. Each lab worked on the same things, with differing results. Our results are numbered one through nine.

Our first result in fact, officially came into being on September fifteenth, nineteen ninety-two when this lab, this very building had been standing for only a few months. Dreams came true. Almost five months earlier, we'd injected the genes of a wolverine into a human infant blood sample, mixing them and through a very tedious process of cell-mixing unknown to most of the world, making an embryo. It was our very first attempt at genetic birth, and it was a perfect success. A little male humanoid came out of the lab's incubation room on that fateful day in the arms on Anko Mitarashi. Number 1 had been born on that day and this laboratory's success had skyrocketed from there.

This one, this one where myself, Orochimaru, Kabuto, Anko, Genma, and everyone else here worked, was the most successful. No other secret Chambers laboratory had produced a genetically-altered creature, or rather, one that lived. All 9 of the successful experiments came from this place, this very building. In our little society, this laboratory. E699, was Disneyworld and New York City.

This laboratory was hidden in the Tillamook Forest, not fifty miles away from Portland, Oregon.

Even now, it gives me chills to work in a building that is easily taller than the trees surrounding it...and to be all but invisible to anyone who looks at us from the woods outside.

Well allow me to explain. Off one side, there was the brick fence where Number 9 had escaped from. The building itself had been painted efficiently with Salume, a product of Chambers, naturally, but hardly anyone would know that! How can they know about Salume, when, painted onto the concrete outer walls of a buildings, makes it all but invisible, see-through, a mere extra patch of air in the sky! No one _could _know, unless they came within a hundred feet or so of the building, in which case Salume will at last take the effect of sun glaring off of it and become visible. But, a hundred feet away, they'd be in our parking lot, and Kabuto the security faggot would have them shot down from his very laptop.

Unfortunately, though, the cars of the employees didn't get the same protection. I suppose it's always a risk to take that drive through the faint dirt road running through the forest all the way to the laboratory, and possible be seen by hikers, campers and whatnot. Which reminds me, I hate forests. I hate them. Too many bugs and animals and _yeegh. _

Only then do I realize I've been locked in a stupor all this time, daydreaming about Chambers, and I've just now arrived at my office. Well, it takes a lot of time to list all of this corporations accomplishments, I'll have you know!

I turned a corner and _finally _reached my room. (I also hate how big this building is. When I'm Director, I'll do my job in a two-story building.) I used a customized blue card to open the door, and typed in a code of seven digits, waited exactly nine seconds, touched the panel on which I'd scanned my card and _then _my door opened.

My office had a better setup than most of the scientists. Most of those poor fools have to live with a desk, a chair, a laptop and a door in their offices. I have a desk, three chairs, two computers and a laptop, a vase of incredibly rare Orchid Cactus flowers, my own printer and fax machine, a coffee maker and even a microwave. As Orochimaru's assistant, I've got it _made._ I picked up my laptop and my favorite coffee mug, I filled the mug halfway with hour-old coffee. At that point, I left the room by typing in another code and showing the scanner another card, and left. I started down the many white, boring hallways back towards the elevator. I passed Genma, who was pushing a cart full of busted computers. He waved at me as he passed but I gave no sign that I'd seen him. If you haven't understood yet for some stupid reason, I hate Genma.

There are two main categories of employees here at Chambers: scientists and workers. "Scientists" conduct trials and tests with the experiments. They select the experiments' food and exercise routines, and study their behaviors. It's the job of the scientist to keep up with the work of other secret labs, and the regular stores where regular people buy things. We communicate with each other all the time…

"Workers" are just what they sound like: maintenance workers and technicians. When machines short-circuit or just don't work, one of them is called in to fix it or take it away and replace it with a better one. The power box that had fallen on Kisame and Sakura last night was probably old, and likely had been due to be fixed or replaced, by a worker. The workers, and a few special scientists like myself, share the duties of the experiments' lifestyle, such as brushing their hair, giving them suitable clothing-usually an average shirt and pants for the simplest comfort-and giving them medicine when they are sick.

Genma, the idiot who just waved at me, is just incompetent. He once asked me how to spell "nearsighted." Redneck loser.

I reached the elevator, and pressed the fist floor button.

It makes me sick to think that I know less than a dozen hard-working people in this building where almost a hundred people were employed. About ninety incompetent, brainless idiots had let our prize experiment escape and if she wasn't brought back soon, the _world _would pay for it. Orochimaru would throw more than a vase at the wall if we failed him.

I shuddered thinking about him. I respect the man, of course, but his calm, intelligent, nonchalant and sometimes even _cheery _front is backed by a temper that had more than once brought me to tears. I really had been thinking I would come out of his office with a wound on my body. I was lucky to have only been yelled at. One of our other eight experiments had better come back with some good news.

Then I pushed open the double doors leading to the cafeteria. Throughout the huge, silvery-white painted room and the three dozen tables, there were only ten people there. Three of them, Anko, Kabuto and Hayate, sat together at one table, and all others were spread out on their own. I hissed under my breath, knowing that in less than ten minutes this room would be filled with employees and their laptops and portable printers and the credit of this wonderful get-together idea would go to Kabuto. And Orochimaru would like him even more.

I needed to work…fast.

So I sat down my laptop at the table behind Anko, Kabuto and Hayate. Since they all sat in a row on one side of their table, they could not see me, and from the sound of their quick typing and clicking, they probably hadn't heard me either. I squinted to see the websites each was visiting and which computer programs they had started up. I quickly opened my Internet Explorer and found the websites they were exploring and opened the programs they had.

They were looking over the welcome pages of our various clients and typing emails in writing programs like Microsoft Word. Squinting harder through my thick-rimmed glasses, I saw Anko increasing the size of her font so that whoever read her email would see "Experiment Escaped into Public" would see it right away. She was probably going to post it on our secret netblog, a protected archive all us "secret Chambers labs" use to communicate with each other. There, much data was posted on our nine experiments and any others other labs had created, and upcoming tests and trials for them to complete. It required several passcodes which were constantly changing for one to sign in, and then another dozen or so to even get past the not-too-revealing "welcome" screen. Any hacker who signed in pretending to be one of us would be stopped by the second, more powerful wall of security. We hadn't been hacked successfully _ever,_ and the last who tried had been over a year ago, and was dead now.

A friend of mine in the hidden laboratory in Sydney, woman of British lineage named Claire, had posted a picture in the "News" section, I saw as I began clicking around. It showed a rather vile cross between a prehistoric coelacanth fish and your average giraffe, laying on a metal table. To me, it looked more like a bumpy fish with an absurdly long neck, and a sick one at that.

_Our _results were much better than their amusing attempts, I mused with a giggle. Under the mutant's picture in green letters were the words "Number 48" and several scientific details such as health conditions and weight and height measurements. So fourty-seven other experiments from the lab in Sydney had been made? And we, the lab near Portland, had made only nine? Was this good or bad? Ours were all successful and we had had absolutely no failing attempts of a genetically altered creature. Judging by the look of their "Number 48" most of their experiments were freak mutants who got sick and died early.

_Ours _were powerful, beautiful—downright sexy, in fact—and even obedient, except for our one screw-up, Number 9. The escapee. The fuck-up.

_'Get working!' _I told myself as I opened a card-making program and set to creating a better poster than Anko's. _'Orochimaru might reward you if you're the first to get something done!' _I nodded and set to work as many other employees came into the cafeteria and nearly all the chairs were filled. Yuugao, a somewhat incompetent scientist, and Hayate's wife, sat next to me and I almost got distracted in thinking about how few truly hard-working people worked here. But, feeling rather pissed, I kept working.

I found photographs of Number 9 in a folder on my computer and put a few of them on the poster. I typed up descriptions, even complex things like her precise height and weight—5'5 and 89 lbs (because of partially-hollow, light bones, but still heavy enough to have amounts of muscle)—in case she was captured and things needed to be made sure of. Fifteen minutes later, I let my hands rest from their godly-fast typing and clicking and gave my work an approving nod. I saved the poster and proceeded to send via email it to everyone employed in one of the twelve laboratories. Well...the ones I and Orochimaru mutually trusted.

A Californian man named Keith Griggs, is one of them. Although American, he works at the EuroDisney resort in Paris as a ticket seller. Normally, I wouldn't give such important information to a _ticket seller _of all things, but Keith knew how to manage money. He was an experienced hunter and "outdoorsman" and had invested in Chambers Inc. ever since it had been created. Even Orochimaru knew the man and trusted him. If Number 9 somehow left America and ended up in the Paris vicinity, Keith would hunt her down in the guise of Mickey Mouse, if he must.

I spent several hours in the cafeteria, posting rewards online, creating descriptions and IM-ing people like Keith about our current situation. I'd been working for about forty-five minutes when Genma-sit DOWN, you imbecile!-stood up. "Listen! Listen! A truck crashed on I-5 this morning!" People started muttering.

"That's within the experiments' search radius..."

"So what?"

"Was the truck carrying illegal substances?"

"No, nothing illegal." Genma smiled giddily, using his laptop's portable mouse to click something. "Just a single dad and his kids driving a moving truck. The driver died, but before he croaked he was able to say he crashed because he was swerving to avoid something in the middle of the road." My breath hitched. "What was it?" I said, standing up. A dozen others took up the cry.

"He says it was a 'pink girl.' A pink girl." The room was silent for several moments, then a few people started dashing to the door. "We've got to tell Orochimaru! We've got to send search parties!"

I took in a breath, and shouted out, "STOP!" Everyone froze and stared at me. I whipped up a speech on the spur of the moment, to keep people collected and wise and to give them a plan. "I-5 is a highway less than forty miles from here! So Number 9 is still in the range of the other experiments, _comprende? _I had a bad feeling that she would fly all night and be several states away from us by now, but thankfully that isn't true! She's still in Oregon, she's still close by!"

Some looked at me with irritated looks on their faces and I even saw Yuugao looking at her watch impatiently, but I ignored them for the people who gazed at me with wide, amazed eyes and anxiety. "We'll divide ourselves in half! Forty or so people take whatever equipment you need and head for I-5 to look for clues. The other half will stay here and monitor the news on this truck accident. The man's kids could have seen her, too." I gave a sly smirk. "Not to mention, the trackign devices installed in each of the male experiments' new shock collars. Should any of them stop near this highway, tell me immediately."

A few dozen people left right then out the main cafeteria door, shouting instructions and names of machines and guns they might need for the search. I sat back down and got to work again. I was IM-ing three different people, two from the underwater lab in the Caribbean, called RK5, and one in the secret lab in Moscow, 66VC.

Since all the secret labs keep in touch as much as possible, they all knew about Number 9 and were shocked and devastated and downright freaked out to discover that she'd gotten away. Most people I told had the first reaction of "What the hell? She _flew? _No way!" And that wasn't a surprise.

No one_, _not even myself, had suspected that Number 9 had the potential, the will, the want, to fly. That she could talk. That she could curse—which the guy in Moscow, Viktor Romanov, laughed aloud at, because mute, super-strong, retarded little mutants don't usually curse.

I gave a start and began typing again. Thinking too much about the situation was doing nothing to solve it. I completely ignored the shouting, worried people around me, carrying tranquilizer guns and little tracking remotes and new car batteries for the jeeps. In another hour, I became satisfied that I'd told everyone who was online at the moment and sent as many emails as I could without being annoying. I turned off my laptop and sighed, feeling suddenly filled with cabin fever, the feeling of needing to be outside. I left my laptop in the cafeteria where it was and made my way to the parking lot of the building, where three dozen people were milling around about one dozen jeeps and various other outdoors-oriented vehicles.

As I walked around, I found that most of the Jeeps and Hummers would be going through the wooded, forest areas and the nicer cars, like Hayate's Mustang and Yuugao's polished Jaguar would be moving around the nearest towns, looking for signs. It made me nearly proud then to know some people had anticipated the fact that not every car would be searching wooded areas, but some would have to blend into nearby cities as well, and search there in more typical, fancy and for this situation, unassuming cars.

I found Hayate and Kabuto shoving equipment into a gigantic tiger-striped Hummer, that, you guessed it, belonged to stupid, bumbling Genma. "I'm going with you." I told them. Kabuto gave me a nod but Hayate did nothing to acknowledge me. I stared angrily at them while they loaded the Hummer. Eventually, Genma came by and the four of us squeezed into the giant vehicle.

"Anko's following us in that blue Cherokee." Genma pointed backwards with his thumb to a blue jeep, with Anko Mitarashi in the driver's seat. She had a satellite dish about the size of a housecat on the top of it normally, but had wisely put it inside her car instead. Besides that, it appeared empty. It was completely opposite to our car, stuffed with every single thing anyone could want to rob a bank or hijack a plane.

He started up the engine and drove out of the parking lot, Anko trailing. I immediately put my hands around my my tracking device for Number 6, stupidly nicknamed Neji. Hayate had the tracking device for Number 8, "Naruto," and the other remotes were being handled by others still in the parking lot. I had taken the remote for Number 6 because I both knew and personally understood his precise, analytical ways. Were he a person, we'd probably get along. But he's certainly not. Ugh.

When put in a room with Number 9, Number 6, like any other male experiment, would chase after her. But, unlike most of the others he would always be aiming for vital spots on her small body that would keep her from moving, mainly her leg muscles. His movements were swift and cat-like, and being a half-caracal, they well should be. Caracals are nearly by definition fiercely territorial and skilled at hiding and climbing (and by appearance, much larger than house cats and sporting tufts of hair on the tops of their ears). And now that I recall...they are _very _skilled at catching birds in flight. A caracal batting down two birds at once has been documented more than once. I started visibly shivering in excitement.

Perhaps Neji could jump up just as Sakura takes flight, and if the timing is right…Yes! Neji could pull Sakura back down to the ground, where she would be held and pinned down, and she could be subdued that way!

Feeling light as a feather, I clicked on Number 6's tracking device. Amongst the green and blue color blobs that represented rivers and trees, and faint grey lines representing roads and highways, there was a pulsing red dot. That dot was Number 6. It had stopped at the bed of a river. It must have been examining it because Number 9 must have been bathing there some time ago.

Then I saw the red dot move west, heading for a silvery line that represented a road. I-5.

666

Guess what? Like a certain reviewer said, I am updating by twos. I don't _mean _to, I just seem to make it happen when I can't stop writing, and they end up so damn long! I don't mind making two-for-ones, but still...Do you have any _idea _how lucky you are?

Side note: Does Karin love Chambers or what? I mean, if it was a man, she'd probably bend over.

Also, Salume is something I pulled out of the air. There's no such thing as invisibility paint, you guys, except in Airborne-verse.

Ta...Storm.


	6. Sixth

**EDIT, July 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, July 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

666

January 10th, and it's gotta be around 10:00…or 11:00 at night….I dunno. ...Sakura POV

666

Like a tired sloth, my strength was returning. Or so it seemed. I might not be able to tell with the blood loss making me feel like a drunk. I could still manage to understand that the man who had brought me into his house was in the other room. His house, I think. I assume. Then again, we all know what assuming makes an ass out of. And now my mind was feeling better, too. I think. Anyhow, the world was definitely becoming less fuzzy, and I could feel the softness of the couch beneath me, and I could have gotten lost in it. In how soft it was. How it molded around my body and I molded into it. Like a cloud. If I were to somehow get a funeral when I die, I would like to be laid to rest on a couch instead of in a coffin. Hee hee.

My mind was unintentionally drifting onto other soft things, like feathers, when the door opened and slammed shut; years of practice allowed me to not flinch. I heard someone, an unmistakably male someone, shouting. "Hidan, what in the flying fuck were saying on the phone? I'm not in the mood for pranks right now you little masochistic shit, I had to rush a good goddamn deal. Hey!"

What a sailor tongue. Dang! My mouth curved up into a grin and since both the men were away from me now, I let the grin grow and stay and fizzle down naturally.

"Shut up, Kakuzu, shut up! The neighbors'll hear you!" Something came running down the stairs, from somewhere behind me, on the other side of the couch. "It's almost eleven at night! Why the hell did it take you two hours to come home? Your dipshit office isn't even half an hour away!" There was a silence. Slick-hair's voice slipped into awkwardness. "Can you get your stitching stuff now?"

The other voice sounded absolutely furious. "I was taking my sweet time because I thought you were pranking me, dumbshit, and the odds are massively in favorite of that. And if it's not a prank and you just didn't want to admit you want me to stitch your childhood teddy, you could have just said so. I don't fucking care. Just gimme the bear and I'll fix it."

"I'm serious, dude. There's a person I need you to stitch."

"If this is a prank, I'm going to get a kitchen knife and stab you in the appendix. When your appendix ruptures, it's called appendicitis. You need an operation to have it removed, or the substances inside kill you, so the operation's necessary, and guess who's not paying for it?"

"Dude, I got my appendix out last year."

Pause. I listened, and then: "I'm getting the knife."

"No, no, no, no! C'mere, c'mere!" There were footsteps, coming close to me. I held my my anxiety, the sudden need to fly out of here. My breathing became steadied, as though I were asleep. The footsteps came closer and closer, close enough to thrust a syringe into me if they wished. But no, they wouldn't do that. No. Then the sounds stopped.

There was silence for an uncomfortably long amount of time, then, "What the hell is that, Hidan?"

"I heard her scream while I was on the phone with you, and when I looked outside, I saw her in the front yard by the apple tree. Her shirt was, was all blood-soaked and her wings needed stitches. There's a stab wound in both of them."

At the word _wings, _I heard the newer, previously-angry voice stammer just a little. "I don't…I'm not a vet. I don't know if I can do that."

"She's not some kind of animal; you don't have to be a vet. It's a girl. She talked to me. Told me to go away and leave her alone."

"You should've."

"Yeah, but I just felt like I had to help her. God's will and...and shit like that. Oh, and I need to hose off the front yard. Her blood made a bigass trail over it when I carried her in and it looks like a serial killer dragged her in here."

"You won't have to. The rain'll take care of it." There were footsteps, and I guessed they were from the boy who'd brought me in here. "Should I get your sewing kit?"

The other, Kakuzu, I think, must have shaken his head. "No. I have some better stuff in my closet. I'll get it myself."

"But what about her bones?"

And Kakuzu sounded almost scared. "Her what?" The "Hidan" came walking back to me. He stopped just inches from me, and I could feel the heat from his hand as it neared my wing. He was way, way too close. "Look at this one. It's all bent and popped out of place and shit. You have to set it." Kakuzu gave no answer, but there was a period of silence before I heard either of them move. Then both of them walked, from the sound of it, up the stairs. Once I was sure they were gone, I opened my eyes and had to struggle to keep myself from fearfully panting.

They were going to stick needles into me. Set my bones. "Fix" me. To hell with that! There had to be a way out of this, I reasoned. There seemed to be just as much dark-red blood as there was grey feathers, and I didn't see this "bent bone" that Hidan had pointed out. Of course, that was an ignorant thing to say; it was completely idiotic to assume I was okay just because I couldn't feel the injury

_CRICK _

Okay okay I feel the injury. Ugggh...Bones sliding against each other. I shuddered, shook, twisted. Felt disgust. God, that's so awful. No matter what, these need to be set properly. They'd been doing this since before I crashed into the front yard and it has to be stopped. A good, harsh pull will move things back into their proper place. That's what you do with dislocated bones. For now...I would just have to not move them. Or move them as little as possible. Did that mean…I couldn't fly?

_No. No. It can't be. You _can_ fly. You CAN_!

Well. Whether I can or not, I still have my perfectly-functioning mind. I put it to work.

When the two men, Hidan and Kakuzu, came back, they would precariously lean over my body with needles in hand, and once they were close and totally believing that I was unconscious, I would shoot my eyes open and kick them away. I'd beat them into unconsciousness if I had to. Anything to keep those needles away from me. The footsteps came again just as I was mentally cementing this idea. Kakuzu and Hidan were coming back down the stairs. I gulped and relaxed my muscles and steadied my breathing. I believed I was asleep…I _so _looked asleep, and I knew it. The footsteps stopped just next to me and I heard the unmistakable _shinnng _of a needle being pulled smoothly, perfectly, from it's protective casing. _'And you say you're NOT a vet?' _

"Attach threads to those three needles there." Kakuzu spoke. "I have to clean the blood off first. It's…aw, fuck, it's all over the couch! _You _are paying for a new one, jerkoff. Now rip off some of those paper towels. I'll need a lot to clean this shit up."

The ripping of the paper towels made an unnerving little shredding sound, and then the cursing of Hidan as he tried to do something with needles and thread. Then, somehow, I _sensed _that the Kakuzu person was coming close to my wing with the paper towels. It scared me, it really did, when I felt his hand on my wing, wiping away the blood from it. I didn't want to be touched. It was wrong. Evil people did it all the time, but no one was supposed to do that. And knowing this was keeping me from whacking them away per my plan.

His hand felt rough and strangely warm, but not at all comforting. All I really took notice of was its size. I didn't need to see my hand, or his, to know that it was much larger than mine. My brain began thinking of his large hands squeezing my wings and pulling them, grinding bones sickeningly together. If they were cricking now, what sound would they make after he crunched his fist and...and...nothing. His fist wouldn't be crunching anything, anyhow.

Hopefully he hadn't heard that little whimper-y sound I just made. Kakuzu removed the paper towel from my wing. "Gimme some more paper towels. I'm not doing anything if I can't even see the entrance wound. The bones can be set last." The little shredding sound came again.

Again I felt his hand and the strange feeling of a paper towel, but on my other wing. Again I felt scared that he would suddenly start jabbing me with a needle, making more wounds.

Nightmares rose. Anko and her frenzied obsession with laughing at things weren't meant to be laughed at. Anko laughed at vivisection, and laughed at me.

"Okay, I got enough off. Hand me the first needle. No, the short one!"

_He has a needle now. You have to be ready. _

I was. I'd been since I'd been dropped on this couch. "Okay, I'm gonna start here…" Kakuzu whispered, apparently, to himself. Just as I had sensed when his hand was coming close to my wing with a paper towel, I sensed it when his hand came close to my wing with a needle. This time, though, I was truly, truly frightened. His needle had almost touched my wing, I was sure, when I opened my eyes. I hardly had a chance to see him, black-haired and very dark skin, with totally startled—and weird-colored—eyes and marks on his arms. In that split second, I put his face to memory. At the start of the next split second, I raised my right leg and kicked him in the chest. He fell back a few yards into a tall bookshelf. Dozens of books fell on him and he groaned in pain.

Hidan was looking at his injured friend and as he flipped his gaze back to me, a strange thing happened. My body acted of it's own will. My hand suddenly raised itself, fingers outstretched, and pointed towards Hidan. He blinked in shock, not understanding what was happening. Well, I didn't either. Who'd have thought.

Then a blue bolt of electricity shot from my palm and sent him flying backwards to the other end of the room.

His head hit a closed, white door and, combining the impact pain with the electric shock pain, he shuddered and his mouth gaped. After a quick, seizure-like movement, he exhaled long and deep, and appeared to lose consciousness. I felt like I should care that my hand had acted on its own and shot lightning at that poor guy. But I didn't. The need to be free from here was stronger than the need to know what had happened just now. So I stood up and surveyed my surrounding while I could.

Under my feet was a a tan couch, a washed-out color underneath the ugly bloodstains I'd just oozed onto it. It stood on a hardwood floor that stretched all around the room. It faced a television set inside the biggest space in a complicated set of shelves. Far to my right was Kakuzu and the door he'd dented and a rug his feet was messing up. I knew that behind me was the staircase and beyond it the kitchen, which surely had a table and counter in it, but I was feeling my mental threads unravel and I was seeing it as a torture room. Moving on. To my left was the gasping Hidan, and also a window and two little tables, one of which had a little statue on it of an open-mouthed man in leather nailed to a cross wait wait _a man nailed to a cross. _I have to leave right the heck now.

To my right again, Kakuzu was making noise, and I at last could focus and look at him, at the strange marks on his body. They ringed around his arms and made a freaky doll smile on his cheeks by extending off his mouth. I can't imagine what happened to him, but I was thankful that his head was down and he wasn't looking at me. That was good. He didn't need to see me any more than he had, and—

"What the hell was _that?_"

My head snapped back to the left, where Hidan was getting up. He was shaky, and for some reason, looking at Kakuzu and not me. "Don't you know how to use a fucking needle? I told you this wasn't a fucking prank! You said you were going to fix her, not give us a fucking trillion volts!"

Then he seemed to realize that Kakuzu wasn't at all listening, and he looked like he was about to go on another furious rant, when his eyes settled on me, standing up, fully conscious, standing on his couch and maybe looking just a little evil, what with my spilling blood all over it.

He said nothing, only staring at me as though for the first time. I was looking into his eyes, his strange, surely not normal...purple eyes! Purple was not a regular human eye color. But maybe he was wearing contacts. Or maybe not. Maybe it was something much worse. For a few moments I began to break out in goosebumps, thinking this was in fact another laboratory, and Hidan another experiment with no mind to speak of and half a dozen monstrous powers, and any moment now he'd shoot lasers from his eyes and cuss me out in Greek. Dampening that theory, though, was his dumbstruck and mesmerized face. His mouth was parted halfway like a fish, like a total idiot. But such an easy bluff won't fool me.

Kakuzu stood up and I went back to watching him, still with my senses tuned carefully at Hidan behind me. And he put me right back on the new-laboratory theory with his own strange eyes. They were, were...opposite. Pure green pupils inside black, absolutely black, sclera. What's with these two men and their eyes? People's eyes do not _look_ like that. And maybe he was aware of it. Maybe he was staring so much because he knew it was unnerving me. We all played Staring Contest Royale for several minutes, and nobody said anything. It pulled up some sunken memories of eight pairs of eyes following me, bringing their claws to follow and hook and hang me up like dressed meat.

Eight sets of fangs and eight horrific beasts. I started trembling. And stopped. I could not show fear just yet.

"Who are you?" I barked, breaking the fearful silence. "Where are we? What's happened?" Maybe if they talked, they'd get a little distracted listening to themselves or something. I would have a perfect chance to hit them again and make a break for it. Not on my wings, of course, but on my feet. From the countless encounters with the other experiments, I was skilled at running and had the endurance of a...of...a...well, me.

"We're…he's…we're…" Kakuzu tried to form sentences, but failed. He looked just as dumbstruck as when Kabuto first blathered his confusion at me speaking. But then his eyes went hard. "What does it matter? Who are _you?" _

He must have been trying to scare me into submission. The tone was hard and almost menacing. It reminded me of certain _others _who had tried the same tactic on me and succeeded but for physical capture. But I refused to think more about that. My left hand shot up, fingers spread, pointed very threateningly at Kakuzu, and suddenly he was the one being scared into submission. "Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine!" He sputtered with amusing speed. He tried to scoot further back into the wall and I'd be lying to say that didn't give me some pleasure. "Ah, my name is Kakuzu, I live in this house with my cousin, Hidan. Him." His dark-skinned hand pointed to the slick-haired boy who stood motionless by the door at the other end of the room.

"We're cousins, we're college students, we combine our money to pay for the house…we were trying to fucking _help _you." Despite the curse, I could, I think, hear genuineness in his voice, and had to stare at that. People never spoke to me like that. They spoke with carelessness at what could happen to me. Or malcontent. Or more recently, total idiocy. But that was all. No variation. No grey area. No good. Except for the college students who had tried to help me for no reason.

Not everyone is a white-coated liar performing vivisection on naked five-year-olds under the mask of science. These people, it seemed, strangers to me, were good.

Neither of them chose to expand on Kakuzu's statement. Or say anything else. Psh. Stoic weirdos. "Fine," I said, not knowing what else to deign them with. "I guess it's only fair that I say something, too?" They nodded, but their mouths were still hanging open in amazement that I could talk.

It was also amazing that I had to breathe in and gulp before speaking to them. "My...my name is Sakura. I can fly. I can...do math in my head...and." I stopped, unsure of how to go on. What else was I supposed to say? Something stupid like "I like swimming and thinking and sleeping"? Uh, no. Anything else I could tell them could be found out. I didn't need people knowing about me.

"Can I fix your…your wing, now?" Kakuzu asked. I gave him at last a focused look and took in his dark eyes, skin and hair and those things criss-crossing his arms and running a line across each cheek. I hope those things weren't hurting him. If he attacked me without warning, I'd _make _them hurt. Me and Lefty Lightning would mess him up. Not that I really know how to make that work whenever I like.

"I'll kick your ribs in if you try to hurt me." I announced. "Each one individually. I'll name them for you." Their breath hitched almost in perfect sync. Hidan's breathe became shaky and jagged. I flicked my head over to look at him, and the sudden flip of my hair and burden of my attention on him froze him like a rabbit.

"We're _not_ gonna _hurt_ you, I _swear_ to fucking God!" he gasped fearfully, as though my eyes alone could electrocute him.

"How do I know?" I said, hiding the uncertainty that bubbled in my stomach.

Hidan gave a short, mirthless laugh. I wonder what was funny to him. "'Cause I'm religious Sakura. I'm not into hurting angels."

Did he just...? Wow. Holy cow, that's. I had to stare at that. Stupidly. "Angel?" I repeated. That one just...deserved a medal. "I am _no angel, _sir."

"Whatever. You look like one. And God doesn't say to shoot angels in the face, so I guess I'll help one." Is that your explanation or your excuse or you...? Whatever. Weirdo. I felt my wingtip suddenly twitch, and Hidan's eyes flicked down to it like a mongoose watching a cobra. His still-shocked face and his and Kakuzu's claims, and everything that was me, conflicted. I had to leave and hide and find someplace far from anyone that would be my home. I had to fly to get there, and to fly I needed their help. They had done nothing wrong and needed to keep living, and if they were kind (and if they were lucky) I'd leave them that gift. In the meantime...

"All right. Please heal them. I can't stitch them on my own, I guess." I spoke finally. I sat down on the couch sideways, so that my left wing was facing them. "But try anything on me…" Hidan began apologizing or something while Kakuzu gathered his spilled materials and shoved cluttered books aside. In a minute or so, Kakuzu had found the needle he'd had before and crouched down on one knee. He used his left hand to gently steady my wing. I flinched as though shocked when he touched me, but settled down as best I could. He held the needle in his right hand, near the stab wound the alley gang had given me. He looked into my eyes, seeking my permission. I suppose I gave it. When the needle entered the flesh near the wound, I hissed and Kakuzu stopped. I could practically smell his anxiety at hurting me. "Go ahead." I told him. "I've been through worse."

The needle pierced the skin lying vulnerable below the blood-matted feathers. "I believe it." And I don't think it was a joke, either. Well, I guess when you're fixing up somebody's bloody stab wounds, something like a needle prick shouldn't seem too intimidating to them. The needle came out through the other side of my wing, and Kakuzu's hand followed it, bringing it back towards him. Thread trailed in the wake of the tiny needle, pulling the ripped, bloodied skin closer together.

Twice the needle broke and Hidan had to thread new ones, and about twice a minute he also had to get a paper towel to wipe away pooling blood, which continued to baffle me, as surely I had to clot soon. Hidan once asked us to stop so he could ask if there was any risk of hemorrhaging. I scoffed and informed him with my Chambers-supplied knowledge that bleeding and hemorrhaging were the same thing, and he kept mercifully quiet the rest of the "operation". Finishing up one wing took about twenty minutes. Once Kakuzu was done, he took a pair of scissors from a sewing kit (knowledge from Chambers told me long ago that it's usually women who have these; I wonder if it's a good thing that Kakuzu is going against the grain here) and he cut the thread away from the needle. He finished my left one, the one that had been stabbed by the backalley criminal.

I looked over my shoulder and saw the black, zigzagging lines on a small section in the middle of my wing. "Do you have any idea how long it'll take to fully heal? 'Cause, I don't know any, like…bird anatomy." Kakuzu whispered.

I shrugged. "It's been broken in several places before. Those each took three days or so to fully heal." This kinda seemed to throw him for a loop, but he said nothing more about it.

Once finished with Wing Numero Uno, "Okay, can you turn around so I can do the other one?" I replied with, "Sure," and proceeded to stand up, turn around, and plop back down on my butt. Hidan snickered, so I guess it must have looked funny. Kakuzu's unusual eyes narrowed as he eyed this wound.

"This one starts around the middle and goes all the way down…" He observed, looking closely at the bloodied feathers. "How did you get this? It's like something stuck in a knife and then dragged it down till it just came out."

"I was in a fight when I got that one—" I pointed at the wound he'd just stitched. "I tried to leave the scene when I heard the police coming. When I was flying, the wound kept bleeding and the blood loss made me dizzy and I didn't even notice I was flying into a tree." I gestured out the window. "So it's your tree's fault. And gravity's."

"It's an old tree." Hidan said absent-mindedly. "I used to climb it when I was a little kid. Had hella strong branches. It's no surprise that they were strong enough to rip open a...a wing."

His cousin moved the wing this way and that. "This one will take probably twice as long so heal as the first." He said. "And it might hurt more, too. And God knows about setting the bones..."

I scoffed and pretended to be uncaring. Really, I just hoped he'd be too cowardly to offer to set my disclocated wing and I could do it myself. So my wing would be in trusted hands. Mine. "I can't speak for all of bird anatomy, but mine can handle this on its own. Enough moving around and the bones will slip back into place. My body has seen worse injuries, so don't worry about it. "

Hidan ripped three paper towels from the roll but didn't do anything with them; the bleeding was finally slowing. "Worse how?"

None of your fucking business, I wanted to say. And didn't.

My mind raced and I struggled to draw in smooth, slow breaths to calm it. Was I supposed to simply tell them I was an eight-year-old illegal genetic experiment spat out by some evil folk working for a corporation that was basically a superior Wal-mart? Yeah, no.

On the logical side of things, it could make them much more scared of me to know the truth. But if I told them, they would run, or even attack. Call the police and animal control (actually, that'd be funny!). They would also become terribly distrustful of Chambers, a corporation most people had grown up with and shopping at, which would inspire goodness knows how many fearful conspiracy theories. Whatever they did, I'd have to defend. I'd have to win. They'd get hurt. People would find their bodies, unconscious, wounded, maybe dead. They'd find traces of pink hair and silver feathers. Chambers would surely find out. They would know I'd been here. They would have a clue to my location. A clue to find me and a trail for predators to follow.

But…I don't know. I just began talking. What I said first was, "I'm eight years old, and I've only been talking for a day." I gave some detail to that as time went by. Slowly, at first. But they listened, asked questions that I could answer in vivid detail, or sometimes chose not to. They gave me sympathetic looks when it was appropriate, and I returned them when I purposefully withheld details. They didn't need to know about the vivisection last year where I was left open for an hour. And I told them about the time Neji chased me and his nail slit open the veins on my wrist. I had dreams of suicide that night but that's not something I'll ever someone. Still, I spoke to these two, and finally telling someone felt good. Really. It was so strange. So surreal. Like an ongoing dream.

On the other hand, it had to be bad to spill such information like this. In fact, I knew it was. But it must not have been of much consequence to me, since I just kept on truckin'. I was now going into detail about the other experiments. In fact, I was describing Zetsu's double personalities when I began thinking to myself about something. I knew then that these people would mean something to me. The cousins, Hidan and Kakuzu, would be a big part of my life, both in death and in life. I wondered how long that would last.

They were the first individuals I'd ever gotten close to. And they were my doctors. As far as my social knowledge went, that wasn't the closest bond in the world. (Yeah. I know social. Just like I know Chinese.) People weren't usually best friends with their doctors, right? But it was the best I'd had as long as I'd been alive. They listened to me talk, were interested, helped me when I was wounded. Cared. There was a word for this, wasn't there?

Friends.

I think I just…made friends.

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January 10th, exactly 10: 04 AM (AN: Backtracking to this morning) ...Neji POV

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This world is a strange one, indeed.

I have overheard conversations by the scientists of forests and oceans and roads and cities they have been to, but there is nothing like experiencing it for myself. The scent of the forest, the river, the animals, is unforgettable. I can barely believe I've spent so many years in one building, not knowing about this wonderful place just outside the walls!

How was I supposed to know all this was out here?

They kept me in the building to study me with various trials. I recall days when they tested my resistance to flame or resistance to poison. I have neither, they found out, when the venom burned a hole in my lungs and I was unable to breathe on my own for weeks. I recall my name and Number: Neji and Number 6, in order of personal importance. I recall my fellows, my friends, who suffer similarly, and similarly can do nothing about it. I recall those times when we were shoved into a room together and expected to fight. And fight we did, with intent to harm, or perhaps merely to play. The scientists can't tell the difference, and they also can't understand us when we speak. So my friends and I could talk about anything we wanted.

We would argue who had been hurt the most that week, who had screamed the loudest and was the bravest, which scientist was getting married and which deserved to have nails pierced through their necks. Naruto once decided (attempted, one could say) to talk about porn to see if that would get a reaction out of them. It did not. Talking keeps your spirit up, I realized when I was young enough to still need my fingers for counting. I realized it even before wise Kakashi was put into a room to fight with me, and could tell me it himself. I knew having friends was something, thought perhaps useless, to live for.

I had lived by that principle up until, and beyond, the day I was forcibly introduced to a little girl with wings. This is a day I barely remember.

Most of my friends met her in a white room, the room where you must chase and fight. I did not. I was strapped to an examination table on the ground floor one day. Yuugao, (I remember she wore a blinding green blouse that hurt to look at) was rubbing some chemical on the soles of my feet. It didn't hurt, only fizzled, so I did not care. I stared out the little window above the sink. Here is my first gap, because the next thing I remember is Sakura standing by my table and looking at me. She was fascinated. I am ashamed because I don't remember what I felt.

Surely I was astounded, and murmured questions to her. I must have asked her name and told her she was a pretty little one and to not let the scientists break her spirit. I should remember that. I don't. Sometime after we had stared at each other sufficiently, Kabuto entered the room and said something that made me churn with rage. He led Sakura away by the hand and she looked away from me very quickly.

Nine days later, I was lucky enough to be put in a white room with her, and there I had planned to uphold my morals and protect her and soothe her. But my beliefs are always pushing down weaker but insistent instincts of my inner animal. The need to roam, the love of relaxing in sunlight (even artificial sunlight) and the compulsion to run and chase prey. It was her mistake to run at that moment. I could not stop myself from going after her. It was part of the game, I told myself. Every time.

Then, not a week ago, when they let us come outside, and she came outside too...it was not the wonderful game it should have been. We started with amusing hisses at Kisame, who was feeling sheepish because he always believes grass was a hard, blue surface, not what we were standing on now, and he'd made bets throughout the years insisting he was right. Kakashi had taken his up several times and decided on rewards and punishments for being right and wrong about it. We all laughed at Kisame's expense, and Naruto stuck out his tongue, because now that Kisame lost the bet, he had to allow Kakashi to inflict a wound on his face during their next "fight." The scientists would likely think Kisame had let his guard down when Kakashi struck, and the poor half-shark would spend the next day undergoing new trials to "strengthen" him.

I wonder at myself sometimes. I must be especially mind-warped to think my friend getting cut is worth laughing at.

When Sakura had come outside, we all silently agreed that we were now one pack and attacking one target. Since none of us have ever succeeded in bringing her down in the Predator and Prey game—touched, perhaps, nicked with our claws, but never captured—we agreed that we should attack together. And then it was a nightmare. She attacked us. She tried to fly away. Karin, the harbinger of pain, activated her shock collar, which activated a chain reaction that destroyed us all. It was not enough that Sakura had to find her voice because of the pain of electrocution. But she exposed a lie to us, one we had never guessed at.

She spoke to us. No, she rather cursed to us, yelled...ruined something I had based my life on: she told us she hated being chased, and hated us. And opened her wings and flew away. And now, days later, here I was, searching for her in the middle of the woods.

I was furious that my prey, my Sakura, had dared leave me. Yet every time I thought of her I smiled and simply couldn't help it. She was collarless, free, speaking. I'm so proud of her. She deserved to be free.

I was thinking things like this when I came round a pair of trees and began watching the scene at a highway. Something large and metal was erupting in fire.

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January 10th…What? What time is it? I don't know… .Temari POV.

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This has to be the worst thing that's ever happened.

I don't care that my dad smokes so much he barely has a voice, and drinks enough that he sometimes thinks I'm his wife, but he'd never had such a terrible accident. This was worse than when he'd thrown a glass bottle at Gaara's head. Kankurou and I had carried him to the doctor's ourselves, and slept in the waiting room. It was worse than when he brought home a strange woman the day after Christmas, who'd taken all of my father's money, _my _money, and was never seen again. In one day, I'd lost more than four hundred dollars, just so we could keep living in a dump where the television was rabbit-eared. It was four hundred dollars that I'd saved for a year, from doing stupid dares for stupid friends, and taking money wasn't mine from careless people.

This was no doubt the worst thing that has ever befallen us. We don't deserve it.

Our dad stole a little moving truck a white back, and was taking us to live with his friend up near Vancouver for awhile. The apartment that I'd given money to those years ago was left behind. Before the landlord could kick us out and take all our stuff, my dad somehow got hold of a truck, made us load all our stuff into it, and drive away. I wondered if it was a smart move. The only real reason I was thinking that it wasn't was because I hated to agree with anything that man decided.

He drove, and the three of us sat in the huge back section, with the furniture and the boxes of smelly antiques and the numerous pieces of crap that were our possessions. There were things like an old dining table, two rotting sofas, boxes of weights and old recycled bottles, and a half dozen bar stools. These were useless pieces of furniture and items our father had won in drunken bets, and planned to sell for more money "tomorrow," but he never did, so we had an apartment full of ugly furniture. The only good things in this truck were my box of secret, precious fans, and Kankurou's black-eared hat and his wooden horse, a puppet he'd carved when he was eleven.

I had been peacefully going through my box of fans, opening and closing each one and staring at the beautiful patterns and trying to cool myself and my brothers with them. Kankurou had been sleeping, and Gaara, who doesn't sleep much, was looking at various books he'd found in a box somewhere else in the truck. No one had been saying anything. We were all nervous to see this "friend" in Vancouver, and none of us wanted to live with him. I glanced over, smirking at Kankurou's hat humorously covering his face while he snored.

I felt a great curiosity when I glanced at Gaara, and realized that the book he was looking at was a family scrapbook I'd had for as long as I could remember. It was empty except for two pages containing a dozen or so photos of us three siblings that I'd taken. The population of that book was us three and no other humans in the world. I. I tried to follow Gaara's eyes, see which picture he was looking at, but it was just so dark in this truck that I couldn't.

Then the truck swerved.

We were all knocked to the left side of the truck. The junk-filled boxes fell onto us. I cried out as an old clock hit me on the side of the head. Kankurou called out painfully, "Te-_maaarr_-i," from somewhere to my left.

We had run over a big bump, I told myself. I didn't realize till a bit later we'd actually fallen into a ditch. Then we all slid towards the front of the truck as we picked up speed and went downhill. The junk piles and boxes followed us. I stuck my leg out and kicked away a ripping, cardboard box that had been about to crash into Gaara. I looked up, wishing there was a window I could look out of to see exactly where we were going, to see why the hell everything was going to fucking hell.

Then it was dark.

And quiet.

For a long time.

Then I woke up, smelling smoke and feeling an ugly, aching pounding in my skull and rather…sticky? I opened my eyes and saw my left arm. It was slightly crooked and blood seeped out of a long, jagged cut that ran from my shoulder blade to my wrist. I was laying on something soft and white, and around this white thing I could see the road. Was I on a blanket? A blanket on the road?

I groaned as my crooked left arm suddenly shook with bloody anguish and looked up at two men in yellow coats, staring down at me. Beyond them I could see the sky, and trails of smoke. _'Is something burning around here?' _I though. "Are you allright?" Said the one on the left.

I blinked, not understanding. Not really. "…Wh…What?"

"You and your family were in a crash." said the one on the right. I realized that he was bandaging me. Looking to the right I saw my other arm. It wasn't crooked like the left one, but was bleeding a lot more, clear through the bandages that the man was putting on it. "The two boys in the truck with you are your friends, yeah? Or are they brothers?"

"Brothers," I answered wearily, watching him wrap bandages smartly around my bleeding arm. "What's going on? Where are they?"

I sat up, hissing and wincing as violent pain erupted in my left arm, the crooked one. I drew it next to me, and, ripping my right arm away from the man who was bandaging it, I pressed it to my chest. I tried to dull the horrible, fucking horrible, pain. My right arm, though bleeding, didn't seem to hurt at all.

"Stop that!" cried the man on the left. "Your left arm is broken so don't try to touch it. Your right just has some cuts."

Whatever else the guy said went right over my head. I looked around, trying to distract myself from the pain that was slowly ebbing away from me. Behind me were two fire trucks and a police car. All three of the vehicles had their sirens flashing and blaring. Men and women in yellow firefighter coats and blue police uniforms ran around, shouting orders, carrying buckets of water and talking into radios.

I was sitting on a blanket at the edge of the road. My feet were laying on grass, and I looked beyond them and saw the red moving truck that my father had stolen and made us ride inside of. It's front was smashed, crushed against the huge tree it had crashed into, and the cargo section, where the furniture and me and my brothers had been, had wheels missing and furniture falling out of the open back door. Smoke was floating freely from the driver's seat, and firemen in yellow coats were spraying the dying flames with high-force water hose.

I stared at it in horror. "Where's my dad?" I said, glaring at the man who'd bandaged my arm. "The guy in the driver's seat! Where is he?"

"He died."

I turned to glare at the other man in a yellow coat. He looked away almost guilty, like he could have stopped my drunken idiot father from crashing. I growled, wondering if I should have been fighting tears right now, because I really, really wasn't. "Then my brothers? Where are my brothers?"

"It's okay, they're fine." said the bandaging-man. "They're injured, but they're alive. They're on stretchers over there. They'll be put on the ambulance in a moment."

I smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. My brothers were my life. "They're not going to the hospital without me in that ambulance with them! Show me where they are!"

"There's another ambulance coming for you, too." the man explained. "We were going to take your brothers first since they have worse injuries."

"Worse?" I cried. The bandaging-man took my right arm and tried to guide me through the mess of firemen and policemen. I panted and twitched, knowing that any minute now my brothers could be driven away in an ambulance and I wouldn't be able to see them. Eventually I got goddamn tired of being lost and pushed aside and pulled away from the man. I made my own rude way through the crowd. Whoever was in my way would need some band-aids later on.

I came to the end of the cars and people soon enough. There were two stretchers standing in the middle of the road, next to an ambulance with a dozen people around them. I ran over to the two stretchers, shouting, "Gaara! Kankurou! Are you okay?" I saw a brunette head lift up above the clamoring adults to look at me. I recognized my little brother's dark eyes and violet makeup immediately.

"Temari!" Kankurou called. I moved faster to get to him.

I shoved aside the people surrounding my brothers and came up to Kankurou. He was sitting on a stretcher with his legs dangling over the edge, several inches from the ground. I reached up with my bandaged right arm and hugged him close. "Broken arm, sorry I can't use 'em both to crush you." I laughed.

"One broken arm? Please, I can beat that." he said, patting my back. He pointed down at his legs, both of which were bleeding, cut, and carried heavy splints. I gaped at the sight. "Two broken legs."

I'm supposed to take care of him. I'm supposed to take the worst of it. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair. "Oh fuck, Kankurou, I'm so sorry."

"I'm fine, I'm fine." he said reassuringly. But his tone didn't exactly convince me. "Gaara's the one to worry about." He half-turned around and pointed to the stretcher next to his. With it being surrounded by people, I hadn't noticed it there. I squeezed Kankurou's bruised hand and shoved aside the ambulance people to make room for myself. Gaara's clothes were torn and his head was bandaged. One of his arms had a needle in it, and a blonde nurse was injecting some blue liquid into him. Three pieces of wood were stuck in his legs, making blood gush out more sickeningly than I had ever seen. It was literally _spraying _out of his legs and dirtying the pure-white stretcher. He was unconscious, but breathing. Still breathing.

I touched the side of his face. It was not it's usual cool temperature. No, it was downright cold. Unhealthily, deathly _cold. _I had no idea what had happened to him. "What's wrong with him?" I yelled, without taking my eyes off my poor brother.

"He's in a coma," Explained the nurse with the needle.

_What? _

"We have to take him to the hospital right now. Do you know his blood type? He's lost so much."

"It's AB something…negative, I think."

"That's okay," Said the nurse with a nod. "AB negative is rare, but I'm sure we can save him."

_Thank you, oh, thank you! _

The stretcher was suddenly pulled away from me. Gaara was pushed into the back of an ambulance truck. Kankurou came soon after, and I jumped into the truck with my brothers and the three ambulance men. The door was shut after us. I heard the sirens come on, and felt the movement of the vehicle as we started down the highway towards a hospital.

Kankurou and I gazed hopelessly at our little brother, stuck in a fucking coma, of all things on Earth. "Where are we going?" I said quietly, hoping one of the ambulance guys would answer me. One of them did. "The nearest hospital would be—"

"Portland." Kankurou said. We glanced at him. "Portland, right?" Two of the ambulance men nodded, the other too busy sticking a needle into Gaara's shoulder to answer.

I leaned in close to my baby brother's ear. "It's allright, Gaara. You'll be fine. It's be good for you to sleep for once, right? We'll go to Portland and everything will be okay. Dad's not coming with us this time. So we'll be safe."

Gaara did not stir.

…My name is Temari. I am seventeen. My brother Kankurou has two broken legs. My baby brother Gaara is in a coma. Our abusive father is dead. Hopefully, in Portland, things will be better.

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DANG. If I hadn't split this chapter in two, it would have been 29 pages and almost 15,000 words!

So, that's why it took so long to update. The freakishly long chapter and some other stuff like zoo camp visiting relatives took up my time. Zoo camp is long and...relatives tell stories. For hours. They're good stories and often amusing, but, having started that around noon, I got pretty damn tired of it around two-twenty.

**A.) **Yes, Temari, Kankurou and Gaara will play a part in the story. Not a big one, at least not right now…but, yes. They are here. Because who can't love the Sand Siblings, huh?

**B.) **I-5 is a real highway in Oregon...I think. I did a lot of _very annoying_ work on Mapquest and looked at various, mostly useless Oregon and Portland-area maps to find this out. I know that highway is in the state of Oregon but I'm not completely sure if it runs near the Portland area. If it doesn't, let's **pretend **it does. So if anyone lives in Oregon and knows about the real I-5 and where it goes, I'm sorry. I did the best I could.

Ta…Storm.


	7. Seventh

**EDIT, July 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, July 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

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January 11th, and I think Kakuzu's watch says 12:49 AM? ...Sakura POV

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"So do you have talons?"

I swallowed the lump of candy in my mouth and stared at him. I'd been too busy in my bliss to hear Hidan talking. You see, after I told them everything, sans...a couple things...about me and my "companions" at Chambers, they hadn't freaked out as I thought they would.

They said I could stay here. As long as I needed. And if any scientist-like people came by, they would protect me and pretend not to know anything about a pink-haired birdgirl. And Hidan called _me _an angel.

There must have been an angel in the house someplace, otherwise my reception couldn't possibly have been this warm. Maybe there are two angels in this house named Kakuzu and Hidan.

They gave me a change of clothes (hilariously big) and put mine in the sink to rinse off some of the blood. Some old football jersey of Hidan's and shorts with a little blue juice stain on the hem. They were even gracious enough to let me stab two holes in the back of the shirt for my wings to fit through. Everything else, apparently, was much too big for me. ('Cause these obviously weren't, right) Hidan suddenly asked me if I was hungry, and when I said yes, he recalled the point in my story when I'd told him the kinds of food I'd eaten in my life amounted to a single-digit number.

All I'd ever been given as food was pills, one chicken nugget several years ago, and synthetic meat, so he seemed determined to show me everything in his kitchen and make sure some sample of it, and by sample he meant whole plate, got down my throat. This made me very happy.

Kakuzu seemed really mad at Hidan when we went into the kitchen all together. Without looking in the fridge or the cabinets he understood that Hidan had bought too much food and started yelling at him for it. Hidan successfully told him off by asking if he took his medication, and then Kakuzu went to go get it from his room. While he was gone, Hidan extended his closed hand to me, and I smiled and did the same. My first fistbump!

When Kakuzu returned he was breathing easier and told Hidan to go and open the fridge, which his cousin did. The fridge was a tall one with two doors, one for the fridge and one for the freezer. He opened both at once, dramatically, and I didn't realize till he moved aside that I had been holding my breath, and I didn't have any fucking _idea _what I was in for when I saw the piles and stacks of stuff in there.

"Pick anything at all, I'll make it for you and watch your taste buds sing." He'd said proudly.

I moved closer to the freezer, which felt colder, more comfortable. So I raised my hand and pointed randomly at some colorful stuff in a black dish wrapped in plastic. I had no idea what it was, but Hidan took it out of the freezer, slammed the doors shut and started unwrapping it.

He put the black dish and it's contents into a microwave above the stove and set it for…two hours! Oh, wait, that's two _minutes. _Durr imma smart girl. "TV dinner. Good choice." He said, leaning against the counter. "That one's got a chicken breast, mashed potatoes and corn. Good stuff."

"Good stuff would be if I could gouge out your intestines with a spork." Kakuzu spat suddenly. This was a very gory threat, and his dark face clearly said he wasn't being funny about it. Thank goodness the microwave beeped then, and he went over to take out the meal. Hidan rushed to a drawer and found me a fork and knife. He set them down on the table in front of a chair and his cousin dropped the steaming meal between them. My sense of smell is that of a bird (suckish) but I could smell this, even standing ten feet away. Fantastic. Hearty. I know understand what "hearty meal" means. Kakuzu pulled the chair out for me. How chivalrous! I took a seat, scooted in, and realized that sitting on a chair that has a back is somewhat uncomfortable if you have wings. However, I'm good at dealing with discomfort.

I picked up the fork and was deciding what to stick it into first, when Kakuzu remarked, "You're left-handed?" I looked at him strangely. This hand was the one that just seemed natural, had always seemed natural, but either hand worked well for me. The people at Chambers had made a deal of it when I was very young and continued to be amazed when I turned out to be ambidextrous. Unfortunately, I was dumb as a goddamn rock and couldn't do much with either hand, really! Haha!

Anyway...apparently this is strange-looking to a regular person. "Is that bad?" I asked worriedly.

Hidan seemed to snicker at me while Kakuzu answered, "Nah. Try the chicken first. The big thing in the middle."

So _that's _what chicken was. Odd. The chicken nugget I got from Kabuto when I was much younger didn't look much like this chicken did. But of course, there are many different kinds and many ways to cook them. I jabbed the fork in and raised the whole, big piece up to my mouth. I could see Kakuzu shaking his head. I did know the proper use of a fork and knife, but didn't care for such manners right now. My mouth touched that chicken, and time seemed to stop.

Chicken. I'm lovin' it.

That chicken breast didn't know what hit it. It was gone in the next three seconds, three hearty seconds, and then I was licking my lips and swiping away stray drops of sauce with my finger. There was more TV dinner to be had. The potatoes I ate in four bites (I didn't even have to chew them! Holy cow!) and the corn I just ate by picking up the plastic dish and gaping my mouth open like a garbage disposal to take it all in, and by God, I could just _taste _the total absense of health in every bite! Fat! Grease! Butter and salt! Hallelujah!

The cousins were now staring at me the way they _should _have stared at me when I told them what went on at the Chambers laboratory. Apparently this is scarier. Tee-hee~

Out of consideration for them, I politely pushed the plate away and folded my hands in my lap before asking, "Is there more of this?"

Kakuzu was still gaping, but Hidan was cracking a grin. "Nnnnoo...but there's a bunch of other stuff." He pointed at the now-closed refrigerator. "Pick whatever you want. And _totally _be sure to eat like that again. Fucking black hole for a stomach right here, Kakuzu!"

And things went predictably on from there, except for the non-predictable fact that I took like five meals to get full, something I found astonishing. I kept expecting to rush to their bathroom and vomit half of this back up, but nope. Somehow, after a life of water, IV fluids and nutrient pills I can stand to eat anything and everything. It didn't make sense, which bothered me, but yumminess distracted me from that pretty well. I mean, there was roast beef, strawberries, chicken nuggets in the shape of dinosaurs (Stegosaurus owns all!), spaghetti and meatballs and broccoli and pancakes, too. And then dessert. Which was just what I had been waiting for.

Hidan had remembered the story of when Karin had held Skittle packages in front of my cage and taunted me with them. He found a barely-touched pack in his school backpack and let me eat all of them. I tasted the rainbow and it was a thing of beauty. I almost cried. Following that was neopolitan ice cream, which is like three flavors in one, a chocolate bar and some Sweet tarts. Now I think Kakuzu was right to rage on Hidan for buying too much food.

And that leads us to where we are now. I was muching a purple Sweet tart when Hidan suddenly asked me if I have talons.

I wasn't sure what he meant, seeing as he'd seen my hands several times tonight and there was very clearly no huge, curved claws on them. Hidan just added, "What? I thought birds had talons. Regular animals have claws and paws and birds got talons." I lifted my hand for him and we both examined it. The nails were very faintly pointed on the ends, but only enough so that a regular human would start to consider clipping them. In a day or two. But that's not what normal people had. I had for see his hand and he held it up for me. His nails were short because he nibbled on them, that much was obvious. And he'd missed them in a couple places.

"Geez. Even I got to use a nail clipper when they got too long." I muttered.

"Sakura. I have something to tell you." Kakuzu said, and I gave him my full attention. He deserved it. "I thought more about how you came into the city. When I went upstairs for my pill, my television was still on the news channel. They were showing something that...that made me think of you." He looked very grave. I had experience with grave faces, so I prepared for something cruel. "The news showed someone's truck crashed on I-5 this morning."

Coincidental, I told myself. Coincidental? _  
_

"The man was driving a stolen vehicle, with his own kids in the back. They crashed into a ditch, the guy died, and his kids were all sent to a hospital." I noticed his hands gripping the side of the counter tightly. "He spoke to the EMTs before he died. He said something about a _pink girl _in the road_._"

Not coincidental, you idiot. I stopped breathing. Kakuzu stared at me. Hidan choked on his Reese's Cup. "I remember a part of your story when you stopped on a road and stood there for a minute. Doing almost nothing. "You were on I-5. That guy swerved to avoid _you_ and died."

How could I not know this the second he brought it up. I had imagined that man's soul flying up into the air with me. If he died...maybe it had. Did he die afraid? Was he scared of being burned alive or not been conscious? Did he pray for his children's safety? Guilt bit into me and froze me. I couldn't move for the fear I imagined that man had died with, that I had caused. I had been playing Shadow Puppet Theater in the middle of the road and someone died for it. That wasn't right. I wasn't Chambers, I would never kill an innocent person like that! Why did this happen!

Kakuzu kept going. "You said you flew several hours to get away from Chambers?"

His children...what? Uh...well, I estimated three or four. I could only barely say back, "Y-Yes."

His eyes lowered. "It must be in a forest far away from here, if you flew that long. You think they'll find a clue on the highway? A piece of your hair or something like that?"

I wanted to shake my head and insist there wouldn't be anyone on the scene who would be looking for my hair or any clues about me. But I knew better than to really think that. I nodded at him in the end. His frown lessened; he looked less worried. "Then the scientists coming after you will take awhile getting here. I think you're safe, but stay on guard and don't assume this is a safehouse. In a couple days, they could be in this area, and then we'll really have to be careful. I'll try to help you, but I still don't want to wake up and see one of your mutant experiment fellows in my house."

The poor guy had no idea what he was talking about. But if _any _of them came into his house, he wouldn't have a chance to see them, anyhow. His throat would be slit before he could get a look at them and I might just follow soon after.

Hidan must have seen my face, imagining something horrid. "This mood sucks." He snapped, getting out of his chair. "Say something nicer, Kakuzu, you're screwing my good vibes."

Kakuzu's nose wrinkled in irritation. "Fine. On a more joyous note, you got something in the mail today. Something you ordered from Amazon?"

Hidan's body shot up so fast and so sharply that I almost fell out of my chair in surprise."My game came and you didn't fucking _tell me?_"

"I was actually going to wait another three weeks so you could write an embarrassing letter of complaint to the corporation, and they'd write back saying you were an idiot who doesn't know how to check his own mail." Kakuzu had a little smile. I liked it.

Hidan crashed out of his chair and ran upstairs, shouting something I couldn't understand. "What game? A board game?" I asked Kakuzu, crinkling the Sweet tarts wrapper.

"Hidan doesn't have the patience for that. No, it's a video game." He answered, staring idly at his nails. "You basically play a loser delinquent who goes around stealing cars, beating people up and being a general nuisance to society. I have an older version of the game where I like to steal cars and crash them into bridges so the little bastard can catch fire and-"

"Halle-fucking-lujah!"

Hidan came down the stairs carrying a little rectangular case with little pictures on it. "All hail car theft!" He cried, on his knees and holding up the rectangular case. "Where's my PS3? Where?"

Kakuzu made an annoyed face and glanced at his watch. "In your room where it always is. Developing dementia already?" With a quick, "fuck you," Hidan ran back up the stairs. I stared up after him, but didn't follow.

"Can I watch him play it?" I asked.

"Why not," He replied. "One in the morning. Mmh. I got a class tomorrow at ten. I'm going to bed." Hidan made "nyah" noise from upstairs and mocked his cousin because he wasn't taking a "break semester" like Hidan was. Kakuzu walked past me and stared to go up the stairs. He was halfway up when I cried out, "Wait a minute!" His footsteps stopped but he didn't look back at me.

I could smack myself for taking this long to say this. "Thank you so much for letting me stay in your house...knowing all the hell I can bring down on your house. I'm so thankful. You two saved my life. You're brave for helping me. And generous." He half-turned around, and gave me a look I couldn't understand. It looked happy at least, but had something else in the mix I wasn't familiar with, and had certainly not seen on any scientist before.

"I'm happy to help you, Sakura." He said with a smile. It made me realize I had still yet to ask where those stiches on his face and arms had come from, but in a way, I didn't care. That was just a part of him.

"It's also very brave of you to just go to bed and not be kept up with the fear of having your house burned down or your spine snapped."

"I'm quite immune to fear. My dipshit cousin burned it out of me when he got us chased by circus tigers in high school." He started up the stairs again without looking back. I watched him go, and then watched Hidan come racing back down the stairs. Together the two of us played his game, crashed cars, stole from people, and punched innocent bystanders in the street. It was so cool. And one of the people we ran over looked like Orochimaru.

Maybe forty-five minutes later (at which time Hidan and I were being chased by a SWAT team) Kakuzu came down because he had woken up hungry. Instead of coming back up, he came into the living room and leaned over the couch and pressed the pause button on the remote his cousin held. Hidan tried to complain but Kakuzu slapped him in the back of the head. "I had an idea just now. Sakura, does a scary movie appeal to you at all? This is the perfect time for one. My friend lent me a great one. There's no mindless, bloody slashing, but it's damn good horror." I pondered this, and recalled conversations about "mindless, bloody slashing" movies that Genma, Hayate, and a worker called Gordman had liked to much. But if Kakuzu called it "damn good horror" it was surely above what those evil buttfaces were interested in.

"Sounds good. Can I have popcorn, too?"

"You may. Hidan, go get Insidious from my room."

Forty minutes later, I was in the middle of watching my first scary movie with the two of them on each side of me on the couch. No, this movie had no bloody, mindless slashing, but the scariness it had was...in-your-face aggressive. A part of me wondered why this type of movie didn't remind me of the male experiments, didn't genuinely scare the life out of me. But I enjoyed it. I jumped thrice and shrieked once and Hidan spilled the popcorn. Kakuzu laughed at us while a shadowy creature on screen pointed its fingers at a sleeping boy.

I was watching a fire-faced demon, sitting close to men with purple eyes or stitched skin, in the dead of night while people were surely hunting me. I was happy.

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January 11th, about 2:00 in the morning, yeah. ...Deidara POV

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If you have lived your life in a small space, I have a word of advice for you. Stop it. Get outside. Enjoy yourself. 'Cause the outdoor world is not only big, it's also got big, fun things in it to do. I discovered this the easy way and the fun way.

Of course I had Sakura on my mind when Karin shouted out the command to search. But while I'm on such an important mission, I need to keep my spirits up. So when I found this group of five teenage people camping out just a few miles away from the Chambers building, I thought I should take it upon myself to scare them shitless. And I did. It was my first bout of unsupervised fun and mayhem. Everybody needs some of that!

I was so, so, so excited. Doing something without the scientists staring at me and judging me and having fun, too. I went up to some bushes around the campers' tent and rattled the branches and leaves like a passing night creature. The biggest of the bunch got up with a big, blunt instrument and came my way. He was challenging me, and I knew what to do with that. I snarled, a deep, heavy animal snarl, and all five of them took off like scared rabbits. I chased them, too, hooting and howling, and sometimes on the ground and sometimes I jumped into the trees and ran across branches. I even leaned down and let my open hand slash a passing boy's jacket. Him and his bare, red shoulder ran screaming. Those stupid humans would never figure out what had slashed their friend's shirt. Maybe it was Bigfoot. Or Jigsaw. Or the ghost of Bin Laden.

Scaring innocent people was the most fun I'd ever had. Sasori would totally kick me if I ever said that to his face.

So after that I laughed myself to tears and then came back to my mission when something hit the side of my skull. I was sure that sometime while I laughed, Sasori had come by and slapped me upside the head or thrown a rock in my direction to bring me back to earth. It worked. Fuck, that hurt, too.

From then on, I kept amusement to a minimum and focused on the real game. The Predator and Prey game. My prey was out there somewhere waiting for me..

I'd be playing a couple games along the way, like scaring teenage campers, but I'd find her. Speed, the one thing that had kept her out of my claws for years on end, couldn't save her from an ambush like the one I was planning. Wait a minute here…has she already seen this? I think so.

The plan to surround her in a ring, like we had done in the yard at Chambers, had been my idea to start with and it had been a good one. But once again, her want to keep us away screwed my plan. She ended up falling into Kisame, rolling with him into a wall and getting trapped in an electric current. God, that looked so painful. It had only been Sasori and Zetsu's hands on me that kept me from running over to her and trying to help. And I couldn't think of what happened after, what was said after, without feeling my heart wrench itself to pieces.

I can think of something else, though. This. Just this. Our mission, which we have to succeed at or die. I have my new eye-enhancer thingy, which is basically the same as my old one but more comfy, and that could help me find her. I kept telling myself I'd find her first, and I'd be the first to ask her why she thinks of us the way she does, and beg her to let us tell her how wrong she is. Know what? That's even truer now than it was five seconds ago. I grinned and showed my fangs to the world; I couldn't help myself.

Since, hey, I'd found her scent.

So I dropped down to the ground and looked around. There were dozens of willow trees, providing shade over a shallow river. Perfect bathing ground. This pleased me. Sakura's wildflower scent was all over this place. The trees, the rocks, the grass, everything. She'd spent a lot of time here before leaving, and had headed…east.

My sense of smell wasn't injured like my eye, and if I had anything on my side besides gorgeous hair, it was an excellent sense of smell. Using one hair, I could track a scent from unending miles. Everyone knew it. Deidara the Tracker—hells yeah—could and would find the escaped prey.

My foot touched the hard tar of a road. And it felt...so..._weird _on my foot that I had to step on it about six times to really...understand it, I guess. I did it one extra time just in case, but it was necessary. I was feeling the road through my shoes, after all, not my bare feet. Hnn? There was something new in the air. No, not new, I just hadn't noticed this scent before. I wonder why?

Out of nowhere, I was detecting _Neji's_ scent. He'd been here before me, likely in the morning…and his trail led up the road, towards—

And a second later I was crouching in the branches of an ash tree. Neji's scent had distracted me from the scene just some feet away from me. There were people here. People and cars. Something bad had happened here. It had happened awhile ago. I had had training in the Chambers building for things like such emergencies, to help my comrades. I knew just by looking how old an injury or accident was. And this was the accident most common to humans, a car accident.

A mashed-up moving truck sat in the middle of the road, and a tow truck was next to it, preparing to take it away. A tree some thirty feet away from the road had a giant crack in it, and it's branches were bent and mutilated and cracked. It was an ugly, ruined tree now. The moving truck with a crushed front had crashed into the tree. Whoever had been in the truck must surely be dead by now. This looked about a day old. It was late at night now, and I'd estimate this happened this morning.

The smells of gasoline, fire, death and pain polluted the atmosphere. The scent of my prey was lost in it. It made me snarl. It made me curl my claws and pierce the branch, to know this accident site had made me lose my Sakura.

But actually, I probably shouldn't throw a fit in someplace like this. People would see me, and more than likely try to shoot me. Something that was stressed in the Stealth Training was evasion, mostly of the "evading bullets" variety.

Still, they had screwed my hunt and made me loose my scent, those—hnn? What's this? There's some police officers walking by my tree. One of them has something in his hand. It's small, and silver…Can this be? Well, this looks like a job for the Eye Enhancer What-The-Fuck-Ever!

I flicked on a switch on the side of the device, and twiddled around with it. I felt the faint tingle of it pulling or pushing or activating or doing some weird shit with the nerves in my eyes that even the new training sessions hadn't made me used to. With this, I could see better, zoom in on things, even see in infrared, and that was all awesome. I zoomed in first, zoomed in more. There were police officers around the scene, and I focused on a certain one. He held a little plastic bag in his fist, and inside it…a silver feather.

_Mine. _

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January 11th, 2:10 in the morning…God, it's late... ...Officer Hiashi POV

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You know kids, if you want to grow up to be a police officer, you have to be prepared to stay up far past your bedtime. For days on end, sometimes. I don't normally need that much sleep. But staying awake for nearly three days simply isn't healthy. I think I would have enjoyed crumpling up right there on the road, in front of all those cars...but I had a case to finish before I could go home. The completion of justice and ruin of crime was a far bigger priority than my need for sleep. Even if it appeared justice was being carried out here, and there was only a shred of evidence suggesting this was a crime. Well. Beggars can't be choosers.

"Officer Hiashi! We've found something!"

As a police officer for the Portland, Oregon Criminal Investigation Department. I'm here to find out who—because it _was _a person—caused the dead father of those three children to swerve and crash into a tree. Pleased to meet you.

"Over here, sir!" One of my subordinates, Officer Yura, waved to me from the other side of the highway.

I blinked away more sleepiness from my eyes and ran over to him. "What've you found? A hair? Article of clothing? Or personal item?" People left behind the oddest things, from fridge magnets to cats to used sex toys. Finding left-behind items was a weird experience most of the time.

"We may have found something that belonged to the person's pet." Yura told me seriously. I wrinkled my brow in confusion, but nodded anyway.

"A...dog collar? Or something?"

But he shook his head, and held up a single silver feather in his hand. "I'm not that animal-savvy, sir. This could be from a seagull or an ostrich for all I know." I whisked out a rubber glove from my pocket, pulled it on, and took the evidence from my officer's hand.

This was no seagull feather. It wasn't very dark-colored, but at the same time, it was definitely too dark to be a gull's feather. I'd been around the block several times, and though I couldn't tell the species, I could tell it was a down feather.

Down feathers were those messy, fluffy feathers on a bird's chest that made it soft to touch and kept the bird warm. Mother birds sometimes pulled it from their chests to make their nests softer for their chicks to sleep in. This feather was only a bit larger than my hand. Down feathers weren't usually this huge. Whatever bird this "pink girl" was carrying was a damn large one.

"The girl may be a falconer. Someone who trained birds."

"That's the only possibility I'm seeing, Yura." I told him as he began pulling a plastic baggie from his pocket to store the feather. "I'll have this analyzed when we get back to the station."

"Anything else we have to do, Captain?" He asked eagerly. Yura was a rookie who'd just gotten out of college a year or so back. He was raring to go for some action, and could only hide it so well. I would have given him another task, but there was nothing left we could do here. The three children were all hospitalized, their father taken to the funeral home, and their truck and all items inside were to be towed to the nearest Jiffy Lube and safely stored away.

"No, we've done everything we can."

Yura stood up and brushed off his vest while we started walking back to the patrol car on the other side of the road. I took the feather and it's bag from Yura's hand. "So, do you have any idea what kind of bird the girl has? I mean, you may know more about birds than me." Yura asked as we walked.

"Some kind of hawk or eagle is my best guess." I said, staring at the feather. "I'm thinking she's a falconer, so tomorrow I'll look up any criminals who've had a past doing falconry. Then we can—_Raaugh!_"

I don't know exactly what happened after that.

Something yellow (in a black coat?) jumped out of nowhere and ripped the bag from my hand, leaving five bleeding scars. Yura was shoved to the ground. There were two other officers and a firefighter near us when it attacked, and I heard bullet shots as they tried to shoot the thing.

I fell backwards and I saw, upside down, what must have been a giant bird run into the woods. Something with gigantic, blue _wings _leapt into the trees and zipped away with the feather in it's hand…or claw.

"Ungggh…" I groaned, holding my bleeding hand close to my chest.

"Captain Hiashi!" Yura cried, sitting up. "Are you allright?"

I gritted my teeth and nodded, "I'm okay…just bleeding some. I feel fine." I looked at the hand. Beneath the bleeding scars, which would heal with a few bandages, my hand was perfectly fine.

"What the hell was _that?_" An officer I didn't know came to help me up. "It was a bird, wasn't it? I saw its wings! The culprit's pet bird!"

"A bird? I saw blonde hair!"

"You think that was the girl that the man almost crashed into?"

"You idiot, Thames! The guy said it was a _pink _girl on the road, not a blonde or black one!"

Yura stared at me, awaiting some kind of answer. "That was our only evidence…" Was all I could get out in my surprise. Yura took out his gun from his holster. "I'll find that person and get it back." He grinned and gave a nod. "You," He pointed at the man who'd been called Thames. "Come with me." Thames nodded, produced his gun and the two dashed away towards the woods.

"Stop!" I shouted, going after them. "You can't just run after them! The person might have armed allies!"

"How else are you going to get your evidence back?" Thames asked, pointing his gun at the trees. "No one in my county gets away with attacking an officer! Whatever-your-name-is, lead the way!" And then Thames and Yura ran into the woods. I couldn't stop them.

"Damn!" I shouted at no one, rushing to the patrol car. I reached for the walkie-talkie in the glove compartment, and turned it to Channel 7. "Unit Three requesting reinforcements! Unknown person has attacked an officer, and run away with evidence in hand! Chase in progress; requesting reinforcements. Our location is I-5, ten miles past the intersection of—"

I shouted on and on, and several minutes later, when half a dozen men came driving up to us, I hoped to God that this whatever this blonde person was, they were not armed.

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January 11th, 2:30 AM, and feeling _very _good, yeah ...Deidara POV

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Humans are even easier to trick than they look. You'd think the police officers of all people would be tougher to handle.

Their sense of smell is that of a corpse, they probably couldn't hear a train wreck, and their night vision is so pathetic that those police men hadn't seen me sitting in a tree four feet above their heads, with only _one _branch, and not a very leafy branch at that, hiding me. They could have looked straight up and seen me! I mean, it's not like I'm the greatest at hiding. Hm.

This is to say nothing of how slow they are. They wouldn't even be a challenge if they didn't have their guns with them. If they hadn't had those, I could have easily swept in and snapped their necks in half a minute. In fact, I think I would have liked to. They were had one of Sakura's feathers in their dirty hands. They didn't deserve to have this. I needed it.

"I think I heard something over here!"

Snickering, I listened to the two humans run after me in the completely wrong direction, following the rustling of a deer in the dark woods. I tore open the plastic bag and gently held the feather between my fingers. It was soft and cool, and in its unruliness I could see beauty. This had to be the first time I'd gotten anywhere near Sakura or anything she had on her, feathers in particular. Some of my friends had managed to get very close to pinning her down and winning the Predator and Prey games. But never me. This was as close as I had ever gotten to touching her.

I didn't have to move the feather close to my nose to get the scent. It was all over the air, at least that's how it seemed to me, and that sweet smell was a relief from the ugly smells of gas and fire from the car wreck on the road. The flowers that were kept in the Chambers building were almost all artificial, and smelled disgustingly like plastic, like air freshener over a rotting food. Sakura's scent had shown me, and Itachi, for that matter, what real, wild flowers smelled like.

That's why I took a little time to just sit on that tree branch and...and breathe. I practically fooled myself into thinking she was with me. I didn't even realize it till my hand reached out to grab her and came back with nothing. Then I knew I was really slacking off. Maybe I'd done too much of that for now. Now was time to focus.

Sakura's wildflower scent was always close to the front of my mind. And even without the feather I could have found her trail. '_But…'_ I thought, fingering the soft thing. _'I'd much rather keep it.' _It was, after all, my first touch of her. Better a feather than nothing, mm? I don't pick and choose.

Since the smell was in the forefront now, the scent trail may as well have been a giant red carpet leading me to her. I circled a safe distance around the highway, and crossed it, miles down the road from the policemen and their cars. I easily found the places where Sakura had been. I could, with my sense of smell, now clearly "see" her footprints, her very steps and pauses and trippings over logs. The scent trail, which I realized with amusement, I could follow with my eyes closed, led me straight back to the spot on the highway where I had taken the feather from the policemen.

The policeman I had ripped the feather from now had a bandaged hand, courtesy of my claws. He sat on the hood of his car, talking to two other men in strange, black uniforms. The ruined truck still sat near them, waiting to be towed away. I cocked my head and twitched one wing, confused.

Sakura's trail clearly led to the center of the road, a spot just some fifteen meters away from the policemen. She'd stopped in the middle of the highway for some reason. There were still a few black skid marks from the truck very near the place where she'd stopped, leading down a ditch towards the bent, broken tree, which the truck had crashed into…

The answer I came up with didn't make much sense. Sakura must have...caused this wreck. But how could she turn a _truck _off its path and force it to crash? And why would she? I knew her strength, the secret strength she allowed to show only when it could be masked as adrenaline. It was powerful, but not enough to throw a speeding vehicle. Only Kisame could do something like that.

Then how else could it have happened? There were no other scent trails as old as hers and the truck's, so no one had helped her. Out of nowhere, my mind grew a devious idea…

I'd just have to ask her…when we captured her.

Thinking of nothing else, I sped right past the three humans, knocking them off their feet and scaring the hell out of them (hahahaa yes!) and into the woods on the other side of the road. The scent was above me now—after causing the wreck, she'd clearly flown away—and since I didn't know how to fly, I could only follow on the ground. Either way, I knew where she'd gone. Unfortunately, I had some friends to meet up with before I could go to her.

I had heard scientists chatting once in awhile. They talked of complicated, mathematical things I didn't understand, but one I did recognize was their topic of cities. I knew which city was nearest to the Chambers building, which direction it was in, how far away it was. Sakura had flown to that city. Portland.

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January 12th, 12:47 PM...Ugh, sleeepy ...Sakura POV

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We hadn't gone to sleep until the freaking sun came up! Geez! And now it was past noon, and we were just getting dressed. Hidan tossed my old clothes into my arms. My grey shirt which had been completely blood-soaked last night, was now back to it's normal color, if a little darker. The black shorts were still red around this little spot on the hem, but I supposed that could be passed off as a fruit juice stain if worse came to worse. Plus, who'd notice such a thing on black clothing anyway?

While Hidan went upstairs to brush his teeth, I remembered all the fun I'd had with Hidan that night Playing his video game showed me how real criminals acted—I think—different kinds of cars, how fast they were and how fast they caught fire. He showed me a movie called "Transformers" where all the characters where enormous, talking robots. Crazy fun!

Hidan went crazy with more movies after that one finished, throwing piles after pile of DVDs at my face and expecting me to choose one out of the five hundred. Anything about the fact that his house may be targeted by the scientists or anything or that sort was apparently forgotten. Now it was purely fun-time. I learned a lot from the ones that I chose. One thing I particularly appreciated was Morgan Freeman. I had heard so much adoring praise about him from the scientists over the years. Now I truly understand why. That man is like a god sometimes.

Only after the James Bond movie did we go to sleep, and even that was an experience. It's not like I don't know what a pillow is, and of course by definition it should be soft and comfortable, but damn! I had fallen asleep on that pillow, on that unlawfully soft cough ten seconds after plopping on it. Hidan seemed perfectly content to sleep on the floor in a nest made of blankets and pointy DVD cases.

These normal people know how to have fun, and lots of it. Now that I think about it, the scientist's conversations I'd heard throughout my years about movies and games weren't nearly as amazing as the real thing. They talked about their friends, amusing happenings at home, their spouses and children, and things they'd seen on TV and while shopping. Compared to Hidan and Kakuzu, though, and their grand, fun ways, it seemed as though none of the Chambers people have a _life _outside of experimenting and writing equations. I preferred to pretend they didn't.

"Hey, do you know how to brush your teeth?" I turned around and saw Hidan leaning sleepily against the wall, now wearing clothes and sporting newly-slicked hair, but definitely not an awake face. I nodded slowly. He pointed up the stairs. "The last door on the right is the bathroom. There's a green toothbrush in there you can use." He ambled towards the kitchen. "I'm gonna make some food…"

_'Toothbrush?' _I asked myself, confused. Usually, I had been given pills and a cup of water that somehow magically kept my teeth decently clean. I spent the next fifteen minutes in the bathroom figuring out how to use the toothbrush and the paste stuff next to it.

When I finally came out, my mouth feeling strange and sparkly and neat, Hidan was asleep again with his head on the kitchen table, next to a plate of reddish-brown strips of something that smelled meaty. I didn't wake him up; instead, I went upstairs back to his room. I guess I thought I'd find something interesting there, but I wasn't sure what I'd thought I'd find. So I just started walking around and looking at things.

Hidan was definitely religious. I saw Bibles in lots of languages, and I was especially proud of myself to recognize the French one by reading only one line of it (I mean, it's not like I know French, but it looks and sounds quite distinctive) along with a dozen necklaces with cross charms on them, and a little figure of a man nailed to a cross sitting on a shelf. I saw little pamphlets advertising different churches and religions, and above all the other religious items I saw one necklace that stood out.

It was held up by a nail in the middle of the wall. Your average, silver chain held your un-average charm. A inverted triangle inside of a circle. Both the triangle and the circle were colored an insanely bright red, like—

"Don't touch that!"

Hidan zipped by me at lightning speed, pulled the necklace off it's nail and had it whisked onto his neck in the span of two seconds. "I don't want fingerprints on this!" He said, holding the thing hypocritically in his hands. "This is my most special, most important charm. If I lose this, I'll go fucking nuts, not to mention I'll _burn _in the fires of hell!"

"Fine, sure," I told him, moving my hands in front of my face as though in surrender. He looked satisfied, and tucked the charm under his shirt so he couldn't be seen wearing it. "Pick out a movie if you want. Just put it in the DVD player and press the play button. I'll come down and watch with you once I'm all the way awake." With that said, he disappeared with a strange, happy whistle.

I went downstairs again. Behind me was the pile of blankets and DVDs that Hidan had slept in last night. The blankets were mostly folded, but the movies were left skewered around like spilled marbles. "Oh, yeah! Almost forgot!" My silver-headed friend stuck his face around the doorframe, and cheerfully said, "Kakuzu woke me up before he left for class and told me to tell you this: _Don't go outside."_

_Then, _he left, and once he was appropriately out of range, I started giggling. They may as well advise me to not stop breathing. I studied the movies again. Scary things and explosive things and a couple sophisticated things. And there were at least another hundred I hadn't even looked at yet. Who cared? I had time. I sure as hell didn't mind watching movies all day. A little part of me considered this a vacation, since I was having some fun and relaxation for once, and I should milk this for all it's worth. And that was what vacations were about, weren't they?

Another part, a definitely smaller, more annoying one, told me that I had to tell the cousins goodbye and keep going. I was being hunted, after all. But both those little parts were crushed by the biggest part, the part that told me to just enjoy myself by doing nothing.

I listened to that one.

I actually had some time to enjoy the fun and entertainment of a regular human's life. I had the opportunity. It was right in my hands. Why couldn't I use it, just this once, before I had to be afraid again?

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January 12th, 2:58 PM ...Kankurou POV

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I've only been here for two days, and the only thing I can tell you is…Hospitals suck. That's the number one thing they do, even the kids' ward, which was where they put me since I wasn't eighteen yet. Not like there's many other sixteen-year-olds around. Not only do they force you to stay in bed hooked up to machines and needles with a million kinds of medicine, but they force you to stay in bed hooked up to needles with a million kinds of medicine when you're _not feeling sick._

I had broken both my legs. I'd been given painkillers, casts, (and a permanent marker to doodle on them) splints, bandages and even an IV drip and some donated blood. Still I had to sit down in this chair and wait until this stupid medical device was done taking my blood pressure…or whatever the hell it was doing.

To top it all off, while all this exciting hospital stuff was happening, I had to be in a _wheelchair. _

The hospital they took us to, by the way, was Emanuel Legacy something or other, and here at Emanuel Legacyville, kids were kept on the third and fourth floors, which is terrible for me because heights scare the living hell out of me. And of course the room I got put into has a wall that's almost totally taken up by a window. I keep the blinds closed if I can reach them. And what's worse is that my room is the only one around with a window this huge. Other kids have little windows with blinds that block out sunlight, but _no. _

Not the kid with the dead father, _no, _let's put his fear of heights to the test and show him how far up he is! And let's make him stay there ninety percent of the day! This is where your tax money goes.

Even worse, Temari gets to walk around whenever she wants. She has one broken arm, just one cast, and gets a lot less medicine and attention than me, and gets to go to vending machines and watch TV in the lobby and the waiting room and even talk to other hospitalized people in the courtyards. Like the pile's not big enough, she visits Gaara whenever the hell she wants…and she doesn't take me there, or anywhere, with her! I'd be more sympathetic to her if she just told me why.

And I have to sit here and wait for nurses to tell me what's wrong with me, without giving almost any news on my baby brother or anything else of the world. The most entertaining thing I have is a Gameboy and a Pokemon game one of the doctors gave me. It's a Yellow version, so my character constantly has this stupid little Pikachu following it around. Since I've been playing the game out of boredom for two days straight, I've practically beat it already. I just have to finish off this guy in the Elite Four and I'll have to start a new game to amuse myself.

That was what I was doing now. This guy named Lance was pushing his Dragonite in my face, so I threw my Nidoqueen at him, whose name was MegaBoobs. She knew Ice Beam, which Dragonite was weak against, so I considered the game basically over for him.

The Dragonite had just been defeated and Lance was giving me a boring speech about loving and nurturing Pokemon when Temari came in, holding a dozen candy bars in her arms and another in her mouth. "Houffit goinn, Kunkwhoa?" She asked through the candy bar, closing the door behind her.

I understood she'd just said _How's it going__, Kankurou _and just gave a uncaring grunt in reply. I didn't want her to know I was thinking about her mood change. After all, she'd been worried sick about Gaara and I, more than sick, when we first came here from the car wreck. Somehow she kept up a carefree, contented mask when I was barely able to keep on this bored one.

I wondered why she did that. I was her brother, after all. Why couldn't she say something about this to me?

Temari bit off the end of the candy bar and let the other half fall into the pile she held in her arm. "They told me I can walk you around the hospital as soon as your blood pressure thing is done."

I turned off the Gameboy, and practically dropped it. "You mean I can finally get out of this room? I can go outside or see Gaara?"

"Yeah. In fact, I came from his room just now. He's still in the coma. But his breathing sounds good, and they said that's a good sign." Her face brightened when she said that, and I could feel mine doing the same. My brother was breaking okay. "I'll take you out after you eat some of these with me." She sat on the bed and pulled me chair around so that we faced each other. Then she dropped the candy onto a stand by the bed and pulled it between us, so that it was like a table for us to eat our dinner on. "You can't have any of the Hershey bars, though." She told me.

"What, are they hazardous to my health?" I sneered, rolling my eyes.

"I just want 'em, and I also just happen to have access to a vending machine. Which you'll get, too, if you keep your mitts off my food, ya dick." And before I could say anything else, she'd taken the chocolate Hershey bars into her hands and proceeded to tear them apart with her mouth. I picked up a bag of Skittles and opened them.

"So how's the fresh air taste?" I asked, since she spent all the time she could outside in the hospital's courtyard.

"Like your sprayed Febreeze over a landfill." She said, stealing one of my Skittles. "Like sick people and wildflowers. It's pretty weird. You'll love it." That made me laugh a little, but when I started choking, Temari just grinned and pointed at me. Eventually, the little candy got swallowed and Temari stopped laughing at my expense.

"And is Gaara recovering."

Temari fell silent at the way I worded my question (well, statement); she didn't even chew. Through my window in the past few days, I had seen Temari walking around in the courtyard, feeding pigeons and talking to other patients. She had looked carefree and cheerful, but I knew through our brother-sister-ESP-thing that underneath that incredible mask she was scared and worried.

I was, too. My mask just wasn't quite as good as Temari's. I was barely holding up my Bored-As-Hell mask as it was. How could Temari hold up hers without even trying? Right now was one of the few times when I was left alone, when I didn't need the mask, and for a minute I had been more concerned with Pokemon than Gaara. I can't believe that playing this game made me forget my baby brother is in a _coma._ Fucking big brother I am. "He's going to be fine, right?"

She nodded, and resumed chewing. "I guess so. They found some donated blood to give him. He's on surveillance all the time. If he so much as twitches or if his heart rate goes up half a percent, everyone will know right away. And it'll be taken care of."

"But he's going to be fine?"

"Fine as he ever was. We just don't know when he'll wake up."

"He will." I sounded more forceful than I meant. There was no reason to be forceful or worried, was there?

Temari seemed to understand. "I'll walk you around the courtyard, and then we can go see him. Trust me, he's got more doctors around him than you can count." I don't know why I smiled when my sister said that.

I had finished my Skittles by now. I grasped a little container of orange Tic-Tacs, opened it, and dumped them all into my mouth at once. Temari chuckled. She took the last piece of her last Hershey bar and plopped it onto my head. "I'm going to the bathroom. When I get back, you better be ready to taste fresh air and see your kid brother."

"No, I'll be tasting fresh air by the time you're out. I'll meet you in the courtyard."

She raised her brow at me. "You don't know how to get to it." She said plainly.

"Yes, I do." I grinned. "Don't you just take the nearest elevator to the first floor and take two lefts?"

She stared at me, as though scared. "How do you—"

"There's a map of the building on the door, you idiot." She turned her head and saw the colorful map taped to the closed door.

"Oh…well then…see you out there." Temari threw away the candy wrappers and put the ones we hadn't eaten into her pockets, and then left my room.

As she left, a redheaded doctor came in, informed me that I was well enough to go outside for awhile, and took off the device that measured my blood pressure. I nodded, trying to smile, but inside I was cheering myself drunk. _'Finally this damn thing is off my arm! Hallelujah! I'm coming, outside world!' _

Confident in knowing where the door to the outside was, I pushed the wheels of my wheelchair forward and reached for the doorknob. About six people, mostly nurses were scattered throughout the hallway. I knew 3:00 was the usual time when most patients were put to sleep for an hour-long nap. Visiting hours were almost over, and apparently not many doctors worked on this floor at this time. The place was practically empty. Well, good! Less chance of a doctor stopping me to measure my liver rate or whatever else they want from me. Gaara's pretty lucky he's not conscious for these guys to pester him. He'd hate the attention.

I did exactly what the map in my room showed me. I found the nearest elevator, got inside and waited for it to take me down to the first floor. It played some eerily soothing music on the way down, and it creeped me out, so I was wheeling myself like a racecar to get out of there when the doors finally opened. Just like my fourth floor hallway, not many doctors or patients were around, in fact I only saw two, and no one stopped me on my way.

I saw the steel doors leading to the courtyard and I saw the trees and sidewalks behind them. I wished I could kick those doors open so I wouldn't have to slow down, but that would have incredible pain and snapping of bones, so I decided not to. I had to slow down and turn side ways and push the door open wide before I could wheel myself outside.

The cobblestone, though not exactly "rough" felt like heaven after the unnaturally smooth hospital floors. The air smelled much more like wildflowers than like sick people, and I wheeled around on the sidewalks for a few minutes just breathing. And what a freaking miracle: there was no one out here but me!

Temari was taking her sweet time in the bathroom like she usually did, so I was free to try fun things like doing wheelies on my chair and going backwards. And I just laughed when my chair hit a rock and almost pushed me out of it. That would have been hell trying to get back in a chair with two broken legs, but being out of that boring room made me just not care.

So then I was just sitting in the chair chuckling like an idiot (I blame the drugs) waiting for Temari to come outside, wheel me around and then take me to Gaara. After all, I had no freaking idea where his room was. It had only been about two minutes. To me, it seemed like two hours. Even when I got bored and frustrated at Temari for being so late, I kept laughing and grinning. Again, blame the doctor-drugs.

So I started looking at things to keep myself busy. Some birds were in a tree near me, and a bunch of flowers with more colors than I could count were planted in neat, clean rows all around. Sidewalks would through the flowers, so that people could walk through and enjoy the view and the smell. Over on the other side of the courtyard, there's a guy sitting on the ground—

Huh. What do you know. A person. I tried not to feel dizzy, tried to gather myself so that I could wheel myself over to him. If Temari took any longer in the bathroom, I'd just have to go find Gaara myself. If there weren't that many doctors around, then I'll just have to ask someone else. This guy might know.

"Hey, you! Brown hair!" I called out to him, drunkenly pushing my wheelchair towards the brunette man.

There was no response. His back faced me, but I could tell he was sitting criss-cross-applesauce…and that his hair was really, really long. He was wearing some black pants of a brand I didn't recognize and a white shirt with no picture or logo. I wheeled closer, and called out "hey, you!" several times, but he just ignored me, or didn't hear me. Getting sort of annoyed, I finally got within arm's reach of the man and saw he was leaning over some of the colorful wildflowers that were planted in rows. "Hey, dude, can I ask you something?" I tapped the guy on the shoulder, but again he didn't answer me, and his arm swatted my hand away…what the hell? That's not an arm…it's too skinny and brown and…_furry _to be an arm…and it was connected to his rear…

_'What the fuck. He's got a tail. You're hallucinating, you're hallucinating…think of all the weirdo doctor drugs you took in the last two days…your brain is full of Pokemon.' _No matter what I told myself, I knew this guy was real. He actually did have a tail attached to him. I tapped him again, and the tail swatted my hand away again. It felt warm and real like some kind of dog…no, more like a cat's tail.

Okay, so if I was hallucinating, I should make sure that it's fake, right? I should do a little test. Maybe this guy's a mental patient or something, and thinks it's Halloween. It's not a stretch. Maybe the tail's just part of a costume. I had to check. this was too fucked up to be real.

"Hey, guy, is this fake?" I tapped his shoulder again, and when the tail moved to swat me away, I grasped the thing and pulled.

_"Raoowr!"_

When the guy jumped up and yowled, yes, _yowled, _like an alley cat that got hit with a shoe, I jumped and the wheels of my chair carried me backwards several feet. The brunette guy pulled his tail to his front and held it close like an injured limb—which it _definitely freaking was,—_and these two brown triangles appeared on the top of his head. They'd been hidden under his locks of hair, or maybe I'd just been too stupid to notice them before. I knew I wasn't hallucinating the fact that this guy had ears and a tail. _Cat _ears and a tail. And they were real.

He whisked around and bared his freakishly sharp teeth at me, glaring with the most ghostly-white pair of eyes I'd ever seen. I was frozen to the spot. I couldn't move, I couldn't speak. The cat-man moved closer to me, his ears pulled back to his skull like a wildcat, and his tail twirling dangerously behind him. All the while his eyes bored into mine. Shit. Did no one see us out there, no one, with the four walls enclosing this place, and the dozens and dozens of windows in them? Seriously!

"You crashed…didn't you?" He was talking to me! Oh, _fuck!_

"I…I…what?" That was all I could sputter at the man.

"You were in a car accident…some days ago…" His voice faded into a growl at the end of the sentence. I couldn't tell if he was having trouble speaking, or if he was just pissed at me, or both. "Who caused it?"

"What do you mean _who? _I don't know how it happened." Stuff came bowling out of my mouth. I couldn't help it. "I was riding in the back of the car. I couldn't see anything; I just felt it when we swerved and rolled into a ditch! And then I woke up and they were taking me to a hospital!" This didn't seem to satisfy the guy.

"_She _caused your wreck! _She _did!" The brunette growled, glowering. I tried to choke out a response. I had no idea what he meant by "she." He couldn't mean Temari...?

"I want her. I want to find her. Where is she?" He grasped the collar of my worn old shirt, pulling me up to his terrifying, angry face. I tried to sputter that I didn't know who he was talking about. The growl this time was much more threatening. I squeezed my eyes shut, expecting him to slash out my eyeballs. I was only dropped back into my wheelchair.

The brunette cat-man took several steps away from me, towards the wall of the building. It was lined up and down, left and right with windows…why wasn't anyone seeing him and screaming? He was real! His claws just punctured my shirt! Why can't someone fucking _do _something?

Just as that thought left my mind, the cat-man did something incredible and insane. He crouched down, looking like he was about to jump up. And he did. He jumped up so freaking _high,_ up four stories worth of hospital wall, that for a moment he nearly floated inches above the roof, before landing atop the roof itself.

He had jumped at least forty feet…and landed on the hospital roof…and run off.

"Hey, Kankurou! You out here?" I heard footsteps; didn't listen to them. Moments later, Temari's rough hand slapped the top of my head. "Had enough fresh air yet? I'm taking you to Gaara's room, okay? We can stay in there for an hour if we want to, but then we've got to leave."

"…"

"Kankurou?"

"Hey, did you see anything weird when you came out here?"

"Besides you?"

"Anything at all?"

"No. Why?"

I didn't see the brunette cat-guy any more. He'd jumped to the roof and walked off until I couldn't even see the tips of his ears anymore. It had _not _been a hallucination. "No reason."

"Fine, then. Now take this seriously, Kankurou. We can't be too loud in Gaara's room. And we can't touch him or—" Temari kept going on about Gaara's condition, and I got the feeling that talking about him made her feel less worried, less frantic.

I was actually glad that Gaara was unconscious. He never told me if he loved Dad or not, if he even cared about him. He wasn't conscious when they told us that our father was dead and we'd never see him again. It felt good when Temari told me to just tell myself he was "sleeping." Gaara needed sleep like a starved man needed food. Gaara was Dad's favorite punching bag, and when he slept, he could forget that. For the past couple years, he'd taken to hiding himself in dark corners, always awake and watching, as though that would keep him out of the demon's path.

All we could do was hug him and talk to him and never leave his side. Though he always kept close to us, he rarely spoke about anything, let alone how he felt about Dad. This coma was just…a chance for him to recover.

He's actually luckier than I thought before, I thought as my mind settled contentedly on Gaara, away from the furious cat-man. He doesn't have to deal with anything or anyone right now. He can just sleep and relax and do whatever he wants in his dream world for as long as he wants. Nothing could possibly be better for Gaara than sleep…and peace.

And maybe a smile or two. I almost grinned, but stopped myself. Maybe when Gaara wakes up, I should make him smile. Whenever Gaara smiles, you know his happiness is exceeding limits. Gaara would only smile on great occasions like Christmas, and even then it was a rare thing.

I'm actually hoping he never loved Dad. That way, when he wakes up and I tell him that he's dead, he'll smile. Then Temari and I will both smile…Then for once all three of us can be happy, and stay that way.

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I admit it. This chapter was mostly an excuse to write Deidara's POV (a change in the experiments I've written thus far, because he's having fun, but is still determined) and to shamelessly plug _Insidious, _a horror movie I totally respect. Scary movies _wish _they could pull off the chills Insidious gives. But anyhow..

Now, some questions you may have. Yes, the experiment that Kankurou saw was Neji. Neji's freakish jumping ability comes from his being half-caracal, a feline that excels at jumping. But he only recently came upon such abilities, due to the strenuous training Karin put him and his brethren through. He couldn't jump nearly as high at the time when Sakura was flying out of Chambers. Now, were that situation to be repeated, he damn well could if he tried.

Hiashi Hyuuga is Hinata's father in the anime/manga, and Neji's uncle. How can this possible tie in with Neji being a genetic experiment? _Does _it tie in with Neji being a generic experiment? You tell me.

Down feathers, by the way, don't generally come from wings, the only part of Sakura that _has _feathers, but from a bird's chest/tummy area. But let's pretend that they do. Or that that's one of Sakura's minor genetic flaws. There are far more significant things to mess up in a genetic experiment than the placement of a few fluffy feathers.

Yes. Neji can speak human. How? Why? Since when? Oh, DANG, what's that phrase that's so freaking overused on this site? Read and find out. Lol.

Ta…Storm


	8. Eighth

**EDIT, August 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, July 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

Psst! This chapter has little action, but is **very informative. Pay attention. **

Chapter the 8th.

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It Could Be Anywhere, Anyplace… Gaara POV...

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If I could find my way out of here, I would be very happy.

But I can't.

I'm stuck in a place that I don't know.

I've been to a lot of places lately. A beach. A city street. A cafe. A mountain. It changes very frequently. In all those places, I had seen people. I had seen them walking in the air and on the surface of the water and through trees and rocks. And all I could do was stand and watch them.

Out of all the silent places I've been...all the people I've seen...they've all been strangers. No face was familiar. Only my siblings', and my Dad's, would be familiar. But they're not here. These people (are they people?) I see faceless figures walking around me all the time, no matter the place. They don't take notice of me. Maybe they can't see me. Maybe they don't care.

I look for faces I know. I look for Dad's. I look for Temari's or Kankurou's. Temari should come and direct me. Tell me to eat or to study my math book. And Kankurou should come with his puppet and make it dance and do stand-up comedy for me. Those are things they did for me a lot. I loved them. But I couldn't find them here. Nowhere.

Also, there was almost no sound here. Four times now I heard a beep somewhere, like a machine. But that's really rare. It's almost always silent, no matter what. Sometimes it makes me think of the silence before a storm. It makes me think that this quiet is going to end soon and something horrible is coming. And I don't dare speak to try and break the silence. It's too terrible. I feel oppressed. I don't like talking. But sometimes I want to say something. And it hurts to be interrupted in those times.

I felt watched and exposed, and at the same time, I don't feel noticed by the people around me. It's much too confusing, so I try not to think about it, or my head will start pounding and hurting me again.

The world is changing around me again. The dozens and dozens of people are melting again. The buildings and landmarks that I had never seen before are turning to dust. I know I _have _to be dead. Things can't melt and re-mold like this in reality. Maybe this is a limbo place between the living world and hell. Look. Some new places is forming. It looks like colors swirling. Like paint. Like jelly. Then one piece of jelly broke away and expanded. It turned into the sky. And ten other jelly bits stretched and became buildings. Then smaller buildings and clouds and a plane.

The sky and the skyscrapers didn't seem real. I felt like I was trapped in a snowglobe. Maybe someone was looking in at me, right now.

A person walks by.

Another. Another.

When will this end? What do I have to do to make it end? Am I dead? I must be a ghost. I guess I'll admit that I _must_ be a ghost. What else can I be now? I must have died when the truck swerved and crashed. But if I can't find my family here, maybe it means they all lived and I didn't. Now I'm stuck in this silent, changing world where no one sees me and I feel like a lost little kid.

The sky is melting again. This time it's turning dark blue. Maybe it's going to be nighttime in this new place. I'll watch the night for the few minutes that it exists. After all, there's nothing to do but walk around in this new world. Watch it go. This process will have to stop sometime. It'll have to. It really has to. Because I can't just say here and be quiet forever and be alone. I have to go to the afterlife, or come back and find my siblings again. Actually, that's a better idea.

Forget the afterlife. I don't care if it's my time or not. I want my siblings. I want to find them. Please.

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January 12th, 7:21 PM ...Sakura POV

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"So this called Sprite?"

"Yeah."

"But there's no fairies or avatars in it?"

"No fairies, no Na'vi."

Not that I thought that was in a Sprite can, but better safe than sorry, I guess. I drank. And it was good. And then I drank all of it. Soon enough, I'd finished off six cans of the stuff. It was a little surprising that I hadn't had this to drink during my Eat-'Em-Up spree last night. This was fantastic. No wonder Kabuto drank it all the time. Sooo good. Soooo fizzzyyy. I drank another can and tossed it in the recycling bin.

Hidan and I were in the kitchen, and if we stood at the front end of it, we could look down the hall, past the staircase, and see the TV in the living room. We were having a "Sprite break" while commercials were running. If we didn't hurry, the Simpsons would come back on without us. "So you drank the last six from the twelve-pack we had..." He counted everything I'd drunk today on his fingers. "And four glasses of ice water three hours ago. God knows what before that. Do you get dehydrated, like, overnight?"

"No...well, now that I have to opportunity, I've found that I just like to drink." Sip. "Whenever I can." Sip. "Even when I'm not thirsty." Another sip for good measure. And for taste. It was stunning that people could drink themselves to death with alcohol when there was perfectly good and non-lethal ice water, soda, tea and hot cocao available.

"You must be part snowy owl." he said randomly. I continued drinking, and watched him over the edge of my can, waiting for the explanation to this silly theory. "I mean, you drank like a dozen cold drinks just today and you don't complain about being cold or shiver at all. That's the biggest thing that makes me think that." Well, according to that stupid, point-blank logic, I was also part gorilla, seeing as I like bananas. "And of course, you got white wings."

I raised a brow as he said that. "No, they're not." I almost spat my drink at him as I said that. Whoops. "They're grey, Hidan. Or light silver. But not white. I thought you would notice that when you were helping put in my stitches." I even half-spread my left wing, right in his face, to show him. I ignored the light sting from the wound that Kakuzu had stitched last night.

Hidan pushed the mass of feathers away from his face, rolling his freaky purple eyes. "Well, do _you_ know what kind of bird you are?"

Well, I didn't. One of the few things the scientists hadn't ever said in my presence was, very oddly, exactly what animal lurked in my DNA. I had found it somewhat less important than, say, facts about medicine, food and survival skills, but had always acknowledged it as weird that I could learn all kinds of things from their talking _except _certain simple facts about me.

"Strangely, no. I just heard over and over again that I'm half bird. I've debated it with myself plenty of times, though, and I feel I'm some sort of hawk."

"No scientist ever walked by you talking to themselves about what kind of bird Number 9 is? Isn't that something they would talk about, like, normally?"

I shook my head, embarrassed now. It was obviously my fault I didn't know. Odds are, sometime in the past eight years, my species name has been said by_ somebody_, and the odds of me missing every single time is unfortunately low. It was embarrassing that I could go years and never pick that up. I felt disappointed in myself, and I felt like I had disappointed Hidan. "It does, but I just never heard it come up. Trust me, I listened! It couldn't have gone past me unless their voices happened to be blocked by a loud noise or something. But honestly, the odds of it are just-"

"Well whatever bird you are, it's a fuckin' badass one." He interrupted and waved his can at me with a grin. "The other bird dude Deidara's got nothin' on you. Fuckin' parrot." We both grinned then. And started laughing. Fuckin' parrot!

Then we both heard the doorknob squeak. Someone was opening the door.

I zipped up the stairs so fast I hardly saw the scenery go by me. I didn't even stop until I'd rounded the corner and almost went into Kakuzu's room. Just another pro of my natural speed. I heard Kakuzu's voice, shouting out, "You little shit! You drank all my soda! Do you think I bought that for _you_?_"_I sighed a little. It was unfortunate that Kakuzu would be so mad coming home when the three of us had had a ton of fun at breakfast today playing paper football and talking about what superpowers we wish we had. (I wasn't surprised to know Kakuzu wished he could read minds.)

"Dude, you can go buy some more. Plus it was Sakura who drank it all, not me!" Kakuzu apparently didn't believe that.

"One girl her size drank six of them? Did she also lift up the house and vacuum under it?"

"Man, seriously! Sakura, come down! Tell Kakuzu you were the one who drank it!"

I was halfway down the stairs when Hidan called me, since I realized I was in no danger. I stuck my hands casually in the pockets of my shorts so as to appear sheepish and innocent, and took a step into the kitchen to see the two cousins glaring at each other. Kakuzu had a black backpack strapped over one shoulder, and I could see a calculator sitting in one of its little netted pockets. He must have come back just now from his "classes."

"He's not lying, I did drink all of it. I didn't realize I wasn't supposed to, so I'm sorry, Kakuzu." I tried to look sorry, too, but ended up smiling sheepishly. His responding expression was strange. And extra-long. To the point that I was thinking drinking his soda was a much bigger offense that I'd imagined.

"Fine, then. But you get the honor of buying the next. And the one after that. So that's, what, twelve or so bucks off your next paycheck?"

Well, that was nice and merciful. Had I been Hidan and drank all Kakuzu's soda, I'd probably have a spork in my lung right now. Kakuzu had made a point to be much more cordial with me, someone he'd known for all of two days, than his flesh-and-blood cousin.

"I just spent all afternoon working on a _very hard _profit-managing project, and then had to show it to people in a _half-hour long _Powerpoint. There was traffic coming home and some dumb redneck bitches honking their horns at each other all the way down Tennyson Avenue. So I'd like to come home after a shit day like today and get a refreshing fucking drink."

"Dude. We just said Sakura drank it all. Cool your jets and get some goddamn water or something."

I slipped behind Hidan into the kitchen and found my half-gone Sprite. "Or some goddamn Sprite, if you prefer." I held it out to him. "I haven't finished this last one yet, and it's still pretty cold."

"Thank you very much." He said with some strain, but I think it was just the stress of the day as opposed to being aimed at me or something I did. His hand was warm from his car's heat and a mite sweaty as he took the can. "What time is it? Seven thirty? Whatever. I'm goin' the bed. Need to rest. Bye." I told him goodnight as he went upstairs.

His anger had apparently left us both spooked. But then Hidan remembered, "Simpsons!" and we rushed back into the living room, but the credits were just ending. "God-fucking-dammit! I see that episode like twice a year! Fucking bitch on a rod!"

These two cuss a lot.

I know it's foul and often denotes a lack of intelligence, but it doesn't with them. It's just...funny and kind of adorable.

Hidan tramped from the living room to the kitchen and back again a few times, cursing and stomping until Kakuzu came down the stairs. _"SHUT UP!" _And Hidan ran to the back of the living room, cowering behind a corner while his cousin went back upstairs. The look of cowardice didn't really match him well, so I tried to distract him with something...something...oh, that'd do.

"Does that door go anywhere, or is it just a closet?" I asked him. Hidan looked behind him. I remembered this particular door for no reason. When Hidan had brought me in his house, bleeding and half-conscious, I had a bit of trouble making sense of things, but after Kakuzu came down and I blasted the two of them away with lightning, I remembered Kakuzu flying back and hitting his head against that very door. It stood out in my head just for that reason. The hallway next to the door led back into the kitchen, but all I cared about was the door.

"That goes to the basement. Nothing down there but carpet and old toys from when we were ten."

"Is there a backyard?"

"_No, _we don't actually own the grass outside our house. Of fucking course there's a backyard! The only way to get to it is from the basement, though. Why?"

I told him that it might be needed as an escape route if someone came looking for me, and felt nauseous as I said it.

"You couldn't fly us out?" he asked with a cocked head.

Couldn't help it. I laughed so hard and so suddenly at that my breath caught in my throat, like I was trying to cough and burp at once. Yuggck! "Carry two full-grown men on my back and still fly? Is this before or after I breathe fire?" His eyes remained unchanged but a grin split his face. "...Well, if there was danger here, yes, I guess I would have to try. But I wouldn't get more than a few miles before I just had to drop you. And I'd look like a complete idiot doing it."

"Have you seen Family Guy?" I just now noticed Hidan's head was looking above my head. Considering the height difference, he didn't have to do much work to look that way. Ignoring his oh-so-subtle change of subject, I said I hadn't, though a worker I knew named Genma Shiranui was quite fond of it and repeated some of its jokes that made me grin. He lifted a hand and made it clear it was going to push me before he actually did. This was a good thing; I might have kicked him into the wall if he hadn't given that warning. Anyway.

His right hand suddenly pushed me and I fell backwards onto the couch. My head bumped the floor and my legs kicked at the top of the couch where my head should have rested. Hidan leapt over and plopped next to me.

"Now you have." And the volume shot up. A redheaded woman was singing and playing a piano…upside-down, of course. A fat man and a dog and a girl and a fat blonde boy and a baby join him, sing a song, and then they are talking about breakfast in their pretty yellow house. The baby takes out a…laser gun?

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January 12th, 9:22 PM, precisely! (AN: Prepare for Chambers and experiment info!) ...Karin POV

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When I got back from my useless car ride with Genma, Hayate and Kabuto, I went to get my laptop, stomping furiously because the jeep had _mystically _run out of gas halfway out of the woods, a magic event I'm sure I can attribute to Genma's stupidity, and we had to turn back. All our equipment for fucking NOTHING. I gave Number 6's tracking device to some other idiot to manage. I was too pissed off at not finding Number 9 to watch that half-caracal beast's movements on a stupid little remote.

I felt like shooting something to vent my anger for a while. The laboratory does in fact have a shooting range, but it's for training purposes only so I can't go in there and shoot shit dead like I want to. The rules declare it so.

Chambers was raving up a storm, I saw when I got back into the building. I don't mean the entire corporation round the world, just this lab. This building. In our cozy little world, dozens of people were running upstairs, downstairs, dropping papers and phones and data and being goddamn morons in general. Were they proper employees, they would have gotten past this stage long ago. By now we should all be sitting calmly and sternly and giving input to the situation. But nooo, shouting is so muc better. Quietly imagining human heads crushed into gore under garage doors, I was in the cafeteria again, waiting for a meeting to start.

This morning I had been replying to frantic emails from clients and friends at the locations of Chambers' other laboratories. Claire Strippet, a British native working in the lab in Sydney, was so upset and scared about Sakura's escape that she couldn't even reply to the mails I had sent her describing the incident in proper English. That is, her reply was full of "whhat" and "oh shit" and "exprrment" and "escape!" But I got her on a webcam and shouted her into submission quickly enough. She began sending reports to her coworkers at her own lab and spreading the news there like the necessary but ugly rat she is.

My acquaintance Keith, in the EuroDisney Paris resort, has emailed me that his supplies are ready at a moment's notice. Right now, he's amicably selling tickets to families eager to see Mickey Mouse. In a few days, though, when Sakura is likely to have flown somewhere else, he'll have gotten a holiday from his job and be patrolling the woods and skies of Paris. And _don't _you give me crap about the likelihood of her flying from Portland to Paris! Precaution is one of our few weapons here, something your parents obviously didn't have in mind when creating _you!_

Anko and several other incompetents were here, sitting at random tables, awaiting Orochimaru. Yes, _Orochimaru. _This is such an important matter that Orochimaru himself is coming to help solve it. Usually he doesn't ever come around to oversee our common work! As his secretary, I know.

Kabuto came in from the south doors, carrying two laptops. (Two laptops? Both his? Incompetent little bitch. Can't even condense all his work to one laptop.) A half dozen other workers came in, too, their uniforms dark and dirty from upgrading the nearest power boxes. They made sure that, even if Number 7, or any experiment ever touches a power box again, they'll be electrocuted to the point that the pain would send them immediately into a coma, and they'll think twice about ever making such stupid moves again. This is a very good thing. We need those power boxes. Without them, we'll have to revert to simple, universally-used generators, not nearly as powerful as the Chambers-patented, though uncreatively named, power box.

Soon all the employees who were in the building were gathered in the cafeteria, all silently murmuring. It would be only minutes before Orochimaru was scheduled to come in.

"Hey, Karin." Kabuto had leaned over and was tapping my shoulder. I turned disdainfully to him. I had always been fond of Kabuto's crafty mind, but never the personality it guarded.

"Yes?" I answered as indifferently as I could.

"You know what this meeting's about? I was never told; a bunch of people just came up to me and told me to come to the cafeteria at 9:20 tonight…"

"It's to discuss the experiments' abilities," I replied. Finally, I knew something Kabuto didn't! Oh, ecstacy! "Mostly Number 9's. But each experiments' will hopefully have some discussion time for itself. Each ability could theoretically aid in capturing her."

"Shouldn't this have taken place days ago? When the experiments were still...living here?" I turned back around while he was mid-sentence and pretended not to hear…because he was right. This meeting was a day or so late. Days, in a matter as pressing as this, was far, far, too long. I should have told Orochimaru about that, suggested that—Orochimaru!

The cafeteria went silent as slow _clat-clat _sounds became louder and louder. Orochimaru's favored Borelli shoes tapped on the floor, always, and let you know when he was coming along. It was a sign to straighten your tie, smooth your hair down, stand up tall and look alert and intelligent. Everyone did so soundlessly. I smoothed my hair myself, and unnecessarily straightened my glasses. The _clats _were very loud now, coming from the east doors. I could see the top of his head through the little window in the door…

And he pushed both of the doors open, stuck his hands in his pockets, and came in.

Orochimaru was the founder, president, Director and rather the _Emperor _if there was one of the entire Chambers corporation. Dark jokes were occasionally passed around, not only in our lab, but throughout the entire corporation, that he could start a third World War if he so pleased, and such jokes were met with about as much humor and acceptance as their Holocaust counterparts. He could just as easily have a position somewhere in the retail, medical or legal branches of the company, but he instead chose to personally oversee laboratories like this, the illegal, hidden portions of the company.

No one knew how old Orochimaru really was. I speculated about fifty-six, sixty at the very most. His face was almost unhealthily pale, and his eyes were always long and slanted like a snake's, a characteristic I felt confident was due to plastic surgery. His hair was dark, flat and perfect, and it matched the dress shirt he wore today, a buttoned-up, maroon Ralph Lauren, that also matched the black dress pants held by a fancy tan leather belt. Orochimaru always made himself presentable. When he didn't...well, he never "_didn't."_

Everyone watched while he made his way to the front of the cafeteria, in a manner suggesting he was merely strolling around the block, a manner which occasionally preceded a bout of throwing chairs, yelling and spitting. But if he was angry right now, he gave no sign. In fact, when he got the front of the room and turned to us, he was smiling.

"Well, we're all here, aren't we? Let's get started. Yuugao, come up here."

Yuugao, surprised from being called by her first name by one of the most powerful men on Earth, stood up, taking a tall, white poster with her. Orochimaru stepped aside, but when Yuugao came up to him, he took the poster from her hands and held it up for her like a high school student presenting a project. Yuugao was too stupidly startled at his kind action to compose herself. We all saw her confused face and heard her stammering. Again rather like a high school student awkwardly presenting a project. Just the sort of humiliation I'd wish on her.

"Y-Y-Yes, well, thank you for this, sir. My…My point of…the point of this chart! The point of this chart is to track the voltage recorded in Number 9's shock collar." I giggled just a bit. I, the keeper of Number 9's shock collar, had no need for such a graph. I knew the capacity of her shock collar by heart.

"It wasn't known to all the employees here, but there were several different devices inside Sakura's…I mean Number 9's…"

"Oh, call her what you want, Yuugao. 'Sakura' isn't a taboo word, y'know." Orochimaru waved a finger almost _playfully _at her and I now shared the freaked-out expression that Yuugao had. Orochimaru is the creator of Chambers itself! The experiments are all his _property_! He should be furious that Yuugao dared to call Number 9 by her childish and completely useless nickname!

Yuugao pointed to her chart with a nervous, shaky hand. It was a large piece of graph paper, and had numerous equations written on the sides. Yuugao was pointing out two zigzagging lines in the middle of the graph. The bottom one was shaky but mostly pointed straight. The top line had a jagged pattern as well, but was definitely soaring up to the top of the paper.

"Uh…Uh…As you all know…There were originally only three tracking devices in her collar…ahem…one for energy measuring, consciousness, and also brainwaves. Each one was transferred to a computer so that someone was always watching all three of these. Energy measuring, obviously measured her energy. We always knew that Sakura had an immense amount of energy and strength, but seemed reluctant or just too stupid to use it. Consciousness is also self-explanatory; that device just told us whether or not she was asleep or knocked out."

_'What a stupid, brainless bitch!' _I thought with a mental snort._ 'Everyone knows that Sakura had those three trackers in her collar and what they did! Why don't you just tell them two plus two, Yuugao? Get down to the heart of the matter__, you fucking idiot! Tell them the things we really need to know!' _

"The brainwave monitor is what I really wanted to share with you all, and that's what this graph is for. Look at these two lines." The bottom line, blue, zigzagged every few inches like a lightning bolt but pointed generally in one direction: to the other side of the paper.

"This represents Sakura's usual brainwaves, how much she thinks, as tracked on any average day. They're usually low, in the sixties, as you can see. Not much going up or down. She...well, she just didn't think very much. Then, when put in an enclosure with another experiment…or in this case, outside with eight..." Yuugao's finger drifted up to the top line of the graph, showing a lightning bolt-like shape going somewhat…upwards.

"These are the brainwaves we detected during Sakura's great electrocution with Kisame, and just before, when she was fighting the other eight. Just minutes before she first screamed. These brainwaves are actually very similar to the ones we usually detect during her time being chased by another experiment. Sakura _thinks_ a lot more when she is being chased by another experiment, you see. The numbers rank closer to eighty."

"Now," she was still going on, "Sakura _thought_ a more than usual during her time in the Chambers brick-fenced yard. This is to be expected, knowing that this usually happens when she sees another experiment. But think of what she was doing when she fought the eight of them that night. She fought back for the first time. She dodged, ducked, punched, kicked and thrashed. Can you imagine how careful and analytical she would have to be to dodge hits from all eight of the experiments at once, and add in her own? That requires a combination of reflex, strength and brainpower most humans can't boast."

The employees, even Orochimaru, were all silent. "Anko and I both traveled around in the jeeps searching for Number 9 two days ago, but during that time we also conducted extra research. And we found evidence linking Sakura's lightning-like ability to the shock collar."

Her electric power was connected to her shock collar? The shock collar _I _had always controlled? Why wasn't I told this? _  
_

"The only possible explanation is that Sakura has had this lightning ability all her life, crackling away inside her, and it has in fact been interfering with the readings the shock collar gave us every day. Completely unintentionally, Sakura hid her true brilliance from us and from technology." I chose not to mention at this point that we also didn't detect her intelligence in her first year or two of life, before she had a shock collar. God knows how stupid that would make us look if I couldn't explain that.

"This isn't everything," Yuugao reminded us. "Sakura broke her collar in half with her bare hands. But there were a few milliseconds in time when both halves were still touching her neck and the wiring was still functioning. In that small amount of time, Sakura's brainwaves skyrocketed, and I mean _skyrocketed,_ to an unprecedented level, well into the triple digits. A level most humans, I correct myself, can't boast because they just _don't_."

I heard my co-worker and friend, Kin Tsuchi, plopping her head into her hand, either out of awe or shame in herself. Still, _still, _Yuugao went on explaining, with a loud voice suggesting she had magically turned into a professional public speaker. "The data the collar gave us every day, for everything, was completely wrong. All that matters is what was recorded in that small fraction of time when it was broken and touching her. Science itself was fooled! By this eight-year-old creature!"

"Science can't be _fooled_." Kabuto said loudly, for all the cafeteria to hear. "Technology, perhaps. Not science."

She ignored him. Yuugao put her hands out to Orochimaru, signaling the chart was done with, and Orochimaru neatly folded the paper and handed it to her. "I, too, believe that this explanation is right." He said. I gasped, loudly enough for the scientists next to me to stare in annoyance. Stupid fucking idiots! But still! How could he believe that, and say it so quickly like it could be shrugged off?

"I also believe that Number 9 is very close by. In fact, I think she'd hiding out in the nearest city." I stared at the Director as he went on, waving his hands as though this were some casual…brunch date! "The car accident that everyone's talking about happened on I-5, not too far from here, no? Well, with the tracking devices in their new collars, we've recently seen that Neji, Deidara, Zetsu and Kakashi are headed there right now?"

I tried to remember where that highway led…what cities were nearest to it. And suddenly I remembered two days ago when Genma found out that a truck crashed on that road, and the driver, before dying, sputtered something about a "girl with pink hair." We concluded that Sakura hadn't flown far at all, when everyone though she would fly at least a hundred miles after escaping.

When no one answered, Orochimaru chirped, yes, chirped, "Portland."

I stood up and I couldn't help but yell, "What? She's _that close?_"

Orochimaru chuckled and nodded at me. "Why yes, Karin. Half of our experiments have scented her trail and are headed to that city right this minute. In fact, I have Zetsu's tracker right on me. Care to take a look?" Our Director fished a walkie-talkie like remote out of his pocket, complete with a dozen buttons and dials. The fist-sized screen showed a red dot traveling through the green and brown blotches of a forest, heading toward a gigantic and huge grey mass marked "Portland."

"But…but how is it that she flew so…_not _far away?" I couldn't believe how stupid I sounded! Like some kind of confused little grade school kid! I may have to drink off this horrendous embarrassment later.

Orochimaru chuckled again. "Well,…I think she flew in circles."

What I said in reply was something like "Hheh?" and I _knew _I'd have to drink off this embarrassment later.

"Think about it, my employees." Orochimaru calmly gestured to us all with his hands. "She taught herself to fly in all of ten seconds, and flew into completely new territory. A completely new _world. _How fantastic a navigator do you think she'd be?"

No one answered. We all knew. "And she was probably ecstatic and drunk with happiness at leaving. Do you think she'd really pay attention as to which direction she's going, as long as it's 'away,' and that she gets there fast? I don't. I think she was so happy and awed that she simply flew in circles for hours until coming to that highway, which wasn't quite far, in the morning and somehow causing that car wreck."

"Now, isn't that all very good? Indeed it is! But n_ow, _we have a new topic. The electricity that Sakura creates from her palms…I would like to create something resistant to that, for it could be a lethal attack. Actually, Deidara would know what a lethal attack it is, wouldn't he, Yuugao?" Yuugao's face froze, and I wasn't sure why. She stared about herself like the idiot she always was until Orochimaru started talking again. "Or do we already have something lethal that's made of something that doesn't conduct electricity? I don't suppose a rubber band could be used to capture this speed demon, hm?"

"An electric-proof net I guess." Anko muttered, chewing on a yellow toothpick. People nodded and murmured agreement. "And an electric-proof gun would be badass, too." However competent and loyal Anko was at her job, her personality, I thought, could use a lot of work. Leave it to Anko to say something so goddamn _stupid _at a time like this. I can't _believe _that Orochimaru grinned at her when she said it! I just can't!

"Not only badass, but very useful. But we'd also need heat-resistant items. Electricity on its own can bake the skin off a man. Sakura's is likely just as powerful if not more so. I'd like to have some protection against this. I foresee human intervention will be needed. Or perhaps we may just fit these onto our dear experiments?"

Eternally Infected With Tuberculosis Or Some Such Thing Hayate lifted his hand like an unsure schoolboy. "What about your standard rubber suit, sir?"

"Wonderful idea, Hayate!" Orochimaru was smiling and clapping for him. "Now, which branch of Chambers manufactures such things as, oh, firefighters' garments, tank tires..."

"Our corporation's rubber products are made mostly in Panama," Said Ibiki, yelling from the back of the room. "I'll phone them right now and ask for the next shipment to be sent here."

"Ah, but is this Panama warehouse a trustworthy one?" The Director said meaningfully. "Karin, I think you would know this." I nodded.

If you don't know already, you idiot, there are thousands and thousands, perhaps millions, of Chambers shops, stores, warehouses and centers. Only a handful of those, meaning less than twenty, knew about the secret laboratories like this one where people like us daily risked our lives and our careers experimenting with human and animal genetics for the good of the country. Orochimaru was asking me if this Panama warehouse was one of the few who knew about these secret labs and Sakura, the half-human escapee.

"Yes, they're trustworthy." I said. "You should ask for Yashamaru, though. He's the manager, since last August."

The Director looked pleased. "Ibiki, would you mind calling them right now? Ask when a shipment of rubber suits can be sent here. Preferably in secret, mind you." Ibiki nodded as he dialed the numbers on his cell. We all heard the phone's ringing echoing off the cafeteria walls. As it rang, Ibiki stood up and made his way to the front of the room, next to Orochimaru. _'Bad move, baldylocks. Stand next to Orochimaru, and you'll be put in your place!' _

The Orochimaru I knew would have been angered by now. He would have slapped that man so hard his neck bones would come out of place, and then kick him to the other side of the room, screaming and hissing. But this Orochimaru did nothing. He just stood with his hands behind his back, staring at Ibiki and waiting.

I just couldn't understand! Why was the Director, _the _one and only Orochimaru, acting so…nice? He had screamed at _me, _his secretary, just days ago. How could he not scream and spit at this lowlife worker, some bald guy in a dirty, dusty suit? Well, it looks like this lowlife worker in a dirty and dusty suit just got an answer. I'll have to insult that he-bitch later.

"Hello? This is from lab E699. Office building of the Director…_yes, _you'd better get moving. It's not often a place like this would call you, huh? Well, I'm looking for Yashamaru. Is he there?"

There was a pause during which the idiotic Panama-phone-answerer was searching for his boss. We could hear the occasional _GROAAAAN _of some gigantic machine.

Then, an oh-so-wondrous screech: "_¡El trabajo más rápidamente, trabaja más rápidamente! …Qué usted desean!__" _The Spanish continued until we heard someone utter a heavily accented "_What?" _into Ibiki's ear. Yashamaru was very quiet while Ibiki explained everything to him. It took somewhere around two minutes, which is a very long time to spill a secret that could change the way humans think of reality as we know it.

Yashamaru responded with something meek and quiet, very different from the way he'd been apparently yelling at his employees before. Ibiki nodded to himself and replied into the cell for several dozen suits to be made, and then was silent as Yashamaru told him something that sounded ashamed or nervous.

"And what did he say?" Orochimaru questioned, his hands still behind his back.

The whole cafeteria of people waited for Ibiki to answer; his face looked a little…discouraged. "Yashamaru sent out all the newest rubber suits just hours ago. It'll be another two weeks before they can make enough for us and get them here."

Orochimaru's smile lifted to become a rather demented grin, and slowly slid back into a sane measure. "I see. And what was going on in Prague? You mentioned it." The bald man stuck his hands in his pockets. He did not look casual at all. No, he looked worried. Scared.

"There's an electric problem in downtown Prague due to some terrorist attacks. They sent all the rubber suits they could to the local Chambers warehouse there, so the workers in the city could be safe from electrocuting themselves while fixing the blackout."

Leaning back and forth on the heels and fronts of his shoes. "And there is no other warehouse _in the world_ that could get us these rubber suits faster?" Eventually Anko waved her hand for his attention. That purple-headed moron, for some reason or other, didn't look bothered at all by the Director's unearthly expression.

"Nah, sir, that one warehouse is the only one that would make rubber suits suitable for the sort of electricity we're expecting from Sakura." The brows of many people were raised. "Come on! God knows how strong her electricity is, or what it could fry. I'd rather be safe than sorry. I've been to that place before. Every product they make is made to be the _best_. They wouldn't be a part of your corporation otherwise. I wouldn't dare call any warehouse but Yashamaru's."

Orochimaru stared at Anko, with such a tight face his skin looked stretched, with such wide eyes that I wanted to look away from them. Anko didn't even _care. _"Very well then." He said. It took just a moment for that tight, strained, this-dam-is-holding-back-a-flood face to sink back into that contended, cheery smile. All evil of Orochimaru was taken away from his face.

"Then we'll just have to use our current resources for her capture until those suits come, won't we?" So unlike everyone else, Anko nodded, as though she were just listening to her schoolteacher rather than her boss and a man who could have her gunned down or kidnapped whenever he liked. "Well, we're quite sure of Sakura's location now. Most of us should stay here to monitor tracking devices and continue to exchange information with the other labs. A dozen or so should head on over to Portland, hmm? See if she's hiding in plain sight. You go on. I'll head out with you later!"

To hide my astonishment, no, my fucking _unbelieving amazement _that our Director would ever do something like this, I stood up and cried out, "Wait! Not yet! Yuugao, you haven't told them the other secret! About Sakura's shock collar!" Yuugao clenched fists and trembled, either furious or deathly afraid that she'd forgotten something so important.

Too bad! _I _was going to take _this _credit!

"Well, there are probably only half a dozen of us in the whole damn corporation that are already aware…" I began, making my way up to the front of the room near Orochimaru. "But Sakura's shock collar had a secret monitor that could only be accessed with two different passwords and an eye-scan, and even those were hidden from most of you. Not only did we monitor her brainwaves, consciousness, and energy, but a few of us high-rank scientists also tracked the influence of her animal DNA."

"…But that was already tracked…all the time." The comment came from Genma, one of the stupidest maintenance workers here. "Yes, Genma, but not by _us. _Unfortunately, you weren't one of the few who studied that data set so thoroughly. Only special scientists like Yuugao and I did such work."

"Then explain it to everyone, please, Karin." Orochimaru told me. He looked at me with that casual, plain look again, and it put me at ease. I was happy to stand in the middle of the crowd and tell them these important things.

Whirling into my direction and thus whipping her hideous violet hair, Yuugao turned my way and begged, "Oh, Karin, please let me announce it! Do you mind?"

_'Yes, I mind you annoying, fish-brained slut! Stay out of my way!' _"Actually, Yuugao, I'd like to"—but that fish brained bitch was going at it anyway. The Director would think me rude if I interrupted her. Above all, I can't upset the Director. We've got to keep Orochimaru happy, after all.

"Well, of course the DNA's influence on her behavior was tracked in Sakura all the time. It means that we were finding out how much of her animal instincts surfaced. The instincts of a northern goshawk, a notoriously fierce animal."

To my left, a smile was growing on Kabuto's weasel-face. I looked away instinctively, wanting to keep my lunch while Yuugao kept up her public speaking routine. "That bird of prey is known for it's intricate flight patterns and its aggression." She made a tight fist just for emphasis. "That's why Chambers chose it to be a part of one of their war weapons: it's quick, agile and _mean_."

"Now that Sakura is teaching herself to fly, we can expect her to use fancy flying to evade us next time we meet her," I interrupted.. "Aggressiveness is definitely going to be a part of her, too, so taunting will therefore be an excellent tactic. You saw her fighting the male experiments that day, just before she was electrocuted. Just like a northern goshawk, she was fast and mean. But we have something that can match that. Experiment Number 5."

Hayate's eyes went wide before he went into one of his usual, time-consuming coughing fits. "Deidara? You want Deidara to fight Sakura? Just because he has wings, too?"

"That's my plan, Mr. Gekko. Number 5 himself is half blue-and-gold-macaw, one of the biggest species of parrot. He's more than a match for in size and wingspan. Blue-and-golds are known for being fairly intelligent, and, I daresay, for _flying, _so I think Number 5 is just our man."

"I know he's not mentally impaired or any such thing, but the most intelligent thing Number 5 has ever done is brush his own hair…" I ignored the comment from someone I didn't even bother to recognize.

"He's never flown before, never opened his wings, but we can train him to fly while we wait for the rubber suits to be shipped to us by Yashamaru." The commentor from before was about to say something again, so I continued even more loudly, "I believe that the hot-blooded goshawk within Sakura may even feel challenged or angered by Deidara daring to fight her. She may feel an instinctual _need _to attack him if he flies too close. Perhaps to defend territory? But whatever the case, we can bring him back here and train him to fly and avoid the aerial manuevers of goshawk."

Ibiki waved his hand to get my attention. "What about the electricity? Deidara could dodge every dive and talon from a goshawk creature, but he's still defenseless against Sakura's ability. We should bring back another experiment, or even two, and train them to fight Sakura together."

"If Deidara has _help _then how is he ever going to be prepared when we send him to fight in a war?" I shouted. My hands clenched painfully on the edge of my table. "The whole purpose of all these experiments is to create the perfect war weapons, Ibiki, did you fucking forget that when you were engineering test tube animal babies? War weapons don't need _help_, and neither should Number 5!" The man looked taken aback…and he _should _be! Asking such an obvious question. He knows very well the purpose of us creating these genetic masterpieces.

"I agree with Karin!" Orochimaru threw his arms up in the air and shouted his opinion for the whole cafeteria to hear. "Deidara in particular should be returned here for extra combat training in regards to flight. He should know how to fight on his own. Once Sakura is recaptured, every experiment will fight with her evenly. We'll force her to use her wings and electric ability, naturally. And come next wartime, they'll be out and most likely separated, and, I think, most likely in the Middle East, killing terrorists and restoring the honor and justice that America was built on, and I think that's wonderful!" He clapped his hands together, leaving his employees to assume we, too, were supposed to smile at the thought of vicious terrorists falling dead at the feet of out masterpieces. It made my breath hitch to think of it, of the reason we all worked here.

"Should we bring Deidara back here right now and train him for flight? Or should we wait?" cried out some nameless worker from the back of the crowd. "I used to be a Marines pilot before I was hired here, Director. I'm sure my knowledge can be of at least a little help!"Orochimaru waved his hands at the man. "Yes, good, good, Mr. Choza! Who has Deidara's tracking remote now?"

Genma waved his hands way up, holding a walkie-talkie-esque object in his left hand.

"Wonderful! Now where is he, Genma? Tell us all, please." Genma moved the tracker closer to his face and observed the many dots and points and color masses. "I think he's in the Portland suburbs. Moving around between houses."

"_Houses? _Anko repeated incredulously. "You think Sakura's staying in some guy's _house_? The hell are you smoking?"

"He's stopped now…" Genma said, standing up, eyes wide. "There's a greenish dot right next to him. It's some other experiment, I think."

"Yes, Zetsu and Deidara are together." Orochimaru said. "Don't forget I have Zetsu's tracking remote. My screen shows a blue dot near Zetsu's green one. Genma, you're right, the two have stopped…apparently in some unfortunate person's backyard."

"We can count that poor bastard dead right now." Anko chuckled, chewing on her toothpick. "Should we look up the person at that address and make up a story for the local press? We don't want anyone finding out what really attacked and killed them at their own house."

The Director nodded, staring at Zetsu's tracking remote. "That's just fine. Oh, I wish were at the house right now!" The Director shook his head musingly. "I'd love to see the fight that those three create…if there's a fight at all. She's never been _ambushed _by one of them before, let alone two."

"I'm sure there will be a fight, sir." Kabuto said. "I can practically feel it."

With a swish of his perfect, smooth hair, Orochimaru called out, "I need a worker to come up here right now! I want to hook up Zetsu's tracker the the overhead screen in the lecture hall so everyone can gather to watch this event. Kabuto, you're the most nerdy here!" I shuddered, because Orochimaru saying the word _nerdy _is just weird. "Come on, now, gather your things and come to my office in twenty minutes, and connect the feed in my laptop there, too. I'll watch the fight alone up there."

Coughing again, this time not even covering his damn mouth, Hayate called out, "I have to email Amelia Bussen in the London secret laboratory and tell her about all this! Using her goshawk blood against her—brilliant!" About a dozen others left too, to do God knows what different things.

I stayed behind, sitting calmly in my chair while the rest of the idiotic staff ran off like excited puppy dogs. I stayed only for the purpose of talking with the Director. "Sir, would you mind if I watched Zetsu's monitors with you?"

He didn't look away from the device. "Of course you'll watch it, Karin. You'll be in the lecture hall watching it with everyone else. Kabuto will hook this up in my office and it will play both on my own laptop and on the screen in the lecture hall. You'd best get down there."

I didn't move. I stood tapping my foot nervously. I had meant to ask if I could watch from his office, _with him. _I was his secretary, wasn't I? Why did I have to watch with the rest of the crappy crew? "How high or low do you think the numbers will be, sir?" I asked pathetically, trying not to sound as though I wanted something else.

"Numbers? You thought I was going to project numbers onto a screen and I'd make my whole staff watch them go up and down? Hahaha!" Orochimaru's chilly laugh calmed me, made me content, like it always had. He must not have seen my little secret smile as he laughed. "No, Karin, no. Zetsu's new shock collar is one of the two that has a secret hidden camera lens in the front. We won't be watching numbers go up and down, we'll see exactly what Zetsu sees. In fact, I've been watching Zetsu's camera for quite some time now. It's like a reality TV show, Karin."

"That's…that's amazing. Wonderful! Was this your idea to install this camera?" He shook his head. Still his face did not waver from Zetsu's tracking device. "It was Kabuto's, actually. He seems more interested in finding Sakura than most other workers. I think he misses overseeing the girl's life. Must have been fun for him."

_Kabuto did something great before me…again…_

_Fuck him! _

I didn't realize until many weeks later that Kabuto had been the first to leave the cafeteria that night.

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**IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND SOMETHING FROM THIS CHAPTER, PM ME AND I WILL EXPLAIN IT TO YOU! **

Also, be aware a few of the scientific facts shown in this chapter may not be true. I don't know if electricity can disable a shock collar or any of it's secret, hidden devices, nor if brainwaves can be monitored in the fashion the Chambers people are monitoring[ed] Sakura's. It is fanfiction, it is a half-bird lightning-shooting girl, it is a very different world. Blame it on that.

Also, for once, this is not a two-for-one chapter. I meant for it to be, but I just went so much slower than usual, and I wanted to stop to watch an anime which is quickly becoming a favorite of mine, and here's my shameless plug of it!

The anime is Ginga Nagareboshi Gin, a 1986 anime about talking feral dogs whose home is invaded by bears. They go off to recruit more dogs for their army and return home to wage war against the bears. The main character started as a pet/hunting dog, and his name is Gin, and you can't breathe without being reminded that Gin is young, heroic, strong, brave, courageous, has fire in his heart, is just a little naive, but will be leader of the pack one day and...yeah. Also it's got hints of sexism (lady dogs must stay home from the battle) and tons of violence (dog gets scythe stuck in eye, for example.) A minor cult classic, or so I've read, it and it's sequel anime, which was made twenty years later. Episodes aplenty on youtube!

Ta…Storm


	9. Ninth

**EDIT, August 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, July 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

Oh, by the way, I think this chapter will satisfy you people who came into this story because of the "MultiSaku" tag. What could I be talking about? What part of the chapter am I pointing at? Oh. Oh, you'll see when we get there.

Also, by proxy of MultiSaku, a lot of guys will be OOC. If you didn't suspect that before.

Chapter the 9th.

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Uh…dreamtime? ...Sakura POV

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After watching the scary movie, we all went to sleep with a light on, and passed the next day in much the same fashion as the ones before, but with a delivered pizza and a game of hide-and-seek around the house which I won. Sometime around 9:30 that night, Hidan turned off the TV and decided we should take a nap, so get ready for our new plan of staying up all night watching a movie series called "Star Wars," which I'm really excited about because Genma and Kabuto have talked about it a dozen times over the years, and even though I know a lot of spoilers, I'm eager to see this franchise which captured the world.

Hidan brought down his alarm clock from his room—it was red and had a lot of biblical stickers on it—and plugged it in the wall next to the TV. He would wake me at 11:30, he said, and we'd start off with the movie which is actually fourth in the series, but it's the one you have to watch first. Even via Kabuto and Genma, I never understood why this is so. Hidan says "it just is."

I fell asleep faster than I thought. (Couches. Are. Soooffft.) And for the first time in a couple of weeks, I had a dream. It was a strange one. Usually, I had dreams that take place in reality, but with splashes of insanity and "wtf"-ness throughout. I remember one where Kabuto went about his scientist business in a polka-dotted labcoat and a dead civet on his shoulder. And I recall one where Naruto stood before a sink and washed his hands in liquid penguins. Now, that one, I knew Naruto didn't comment on the penguins _not _because it was just a silly dream, but because he's a brainless beast and wouldn't realize he should wig out even if solid gold came out of the sink.

This dream, though, appeared to be a flashback, reliving a few minutes of my life. It was strange, but not unfamiliar. The way I experienced the dream it what was strangest. I didn't see through my own eyes. I saw myself, my image, like I'm looking through some kind of camera, like someone made a movie about me and I'm watching. It made me so uncomfortable.

It started out when I was sitting on an examination table, looking at a broken nail on my right hand. I knew this dream was a flashback because of that nail. I remembered it, remembered how weird it made me feel and how I picked at it for hours before Hayate saw it and clipped it off, while humming a song that went like, "aint nothin' but a hooound dooog." I was two years old that day. I must have looked like a six- or seven-year-old child.

At this point, no one had noticed my broken nail so I sat there attending to it. I had a kind of Scrabble game going on in my head. I was generation random letters one at a time and attempting to spell "fascination" as quickly as possible while a timer in another section of my mind counted down. It was pretty fun. Then evil came.

By this I mean Kin. She opened the door (her labcoat was buttoned up that day, which was odd for her) and came in with a bottle of rubbing alcohol. This she dropped on the floor out of nowhere, and I, the dreamer, the eight-year-old I am now, wondered why that happened. In the real memory, she hadn't dropped the bottle, she had set it down on the counter next to me. Now Kin fetched a little stool from the corner and sat on it so she was about level with my knees as I sat on the table. Suddenly a nail file was in her hand, and I, the two-year-old child, was scared and panting, and so was Kin.

"Please. Please..." I murmured to her, and my little hands shook. At this point I knew this had veered away from flashback territory and into a regular dream. But why was I so scared?

"I'm working, kid, don't worry." Kin gasped. She worked madly with the nail file at a metal brace that was suddenly locked around my ankle, and chained to the floor. "I'll get you out." The walls began to glow faintly red, and shone with wetness. We weren't in an examination room anymore.

I started to tell Kin something unintelligible. She nodded and nodded, but then suddenly looked up. "Oh, God, Sakura." She whispered, and stared behind me. "He's looking."

Something was there. Something was looking. I turned behind me to see it, and there behind the barred window was Sasori, eyes wide and hands open and tongue sweeping slowly and madly at the bars. As I saw him, I heard an insane chorus of violins and knew he would get through.

Here I woke up. My eyes shuddered open slowly, unwillingly, and they opened another one of my indifferent acceptances of such nightmares as perfectly real. I had dreams like this very often, dreams of the other experiments about to finally get me, touch me. Or dreams where they actually did get to do it, and would rend me open. This one was the first of its kind I'd had since I escaped Chambers. I must have unconsciously hoped once I escaped the other experiments, I would escape dreams about them, too, and that was why I felt so resigned and heavy right now. Chained to those monsters even in my new haven...I would like to have something else to say besides that, but I don't.

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January 12th, 11:30 PM, since Hidan's clock is ringing now… ...Sakura POV

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Huh. I suppose all I needed was time. Because by the time Hidan's alarm clock went off and woke him up, I was feeling better, and had the energy and will to drive the dream and all its nasty implications out of my mind.

After all, I still was lying on the warm, soft couch! Score one for Sakura! As I was smiling about this, Hidan slapped the alarm clock to stop it from ringing and got up.

"Yuuughhh. Nice nap. Nice." He sat on the floor for a few seconds, just blinking away sleep and suddenly he scared me, making my feathers stick up. "OHTHEMOVIE! Dude, what's up with your feathers? They look like hedgehog spikes….Uh, whatever, I'm gonna go get the movie. Stay here."

As Hidan went upstairs, Kakuzu came down, holding what looked like a checkbook in his hand. He slapped Hidan's back as he passed—it looked more painful than affectionate—and he focused his dark eyes on me. "Hey, can you open your wings for a second?"

I stood up and stretched my legs as I put them on the ground, as I had always done. I told him, "Sure, what for?"

"Just checking some things. Some proportions."

Kakuzu could check whatever he wanted about me. I trusted him, so I spread my wings for him (the right one was a little bit smooshed against the TV screen). As he moved a step closer, it struck me that that trust was really, really strange for me. Look at me. Trusting someone. Man.

He had some measuring tape in his hand, and I guessed he was going to check my wingspan. I let him stretch the yellow tape from one grey wingtip to the other. "Nearly eleven feet." He finished. Then he moved the tape under the sole of my foot, and moved it up to the top of my head. "You're five-five. Barely."

"If you wanted to know if my wingspan was proportional to my height or weight, you could have asked that." I asked, fingering my hair.

He let go of the measuring tape and it retracted into its container with a loud _snap! _"I thought they must be, if you can fly all right without feeling too burdened or out of control. But hey, maybe they screwed you up. They're fucked in the head, so it wouldn't surprise me any. Just wanted to check."

"They made me proportional, I promise. My height wouldn't even make their list of top fifty mistakes."

He snorted. "You kidding? Your wings are a foot too short. Maybe a little more. Your wingspan should be almost twice your height. It's a little less than that."

Well, look at him and his...mathematical formulas! "I'm impressed that you know proportions like that, since you were nervous about 'not being a vet' when you first saw me and fixed me up."

"Hn. I guess some of us are just smarter than others. There's a reason I get a shitload of scholarships and he gets none." He glared upwards at the ceiling, where Hidan was banging around.

This brought up a new thought for me. "What are you and Hidan going to college to become? Will you be a mathematician?"

An annoyed look crossed his face. The stitches made a massive, synthetic grin on his face, but this expression effectively broke that. "Prior to being a lazy shit and taking a gap semester, he was going into youth ministry. Teaching kids and teens to worship." I told him that that was a little bit unbelievable, and to please answer me seriously. "I am! He wants to teach religion to young people in a way that's not stuffy and long-winded. I've seen him go to a local church and do it, he's pretty good. When he graduates next year, he wants to move to Germany and get a job there."

That's...unexpected. Is Germany ready for Hidan Zashi, I wonder? I told Kakuzu this and he just shrugged. "He's just obsessed with the fact that over there, kids can take a class about religion in school. So he might be a minister _and _a teacher. His German's definitely good enough to do that, at least." I was about to gasp and wig out over the fact that Hidan apparently speaks good German, when I was interrupted with, "Now, do your wings hurt at all?"

I responded quickly, "No, they're healing perfectly. In fact, you ought to be able to take the stitches out tonight or tomorrow morning." to which he said, "That's weird."

"Why?" He made a flowing motion with his hands that made him look a lot like a professor. "When I sewed up your wings, I noticed they were making some cracking noises when they moved too much. It sounded to me like the bones were out of place, or broken or bruised or…something like that."

"Excellent observation, Sir Not-A-Vet."

He looked away, and I swear his face was a few degrees shy of _blushing _when he answered, "Not a vet. Doctor. I'm majoring in medical science and aim to be a spinal surgeon...and any med student or local drunk could guess that you should be feeling some pain considering how you got both those injuries."

I'd have to be a local drunk myself to forget being stabbed in the wing by a knife and then by a tree. Or that surreal experience of catching my dripping blood in my hands and smearing it in my shirt so it wouldn't hit unsuspecting people like bird poop. Thinking of this made me unconsciously rub the hem of my white tee, which was most definitely white again thanks to the washing machine in this house. And of course, the fact that the fight with the gang members had wounded my wing somehow, dislocated a part of it, in such a way that they creaked and scraped against each other all the time, possibly due to a ligament that had been worn or torn away. I had planned to set my wing myself, but hadn't done it simply because I forgot. Star Wars and chicken breast and hide-and-seek made me forget, and the pain and the bone-scraping is gone now. My body must have taken care of this on its own. How lucky.

These thoughts passed through my mind in some one and a quarter seconds, and then I told Kakuzu, "Well, considering my body can heal a broken arm in three days, I am frankly not surprised that the problem's gone away. I would have set the wing myself, but honestly hanging out with you two made me forget, and I must have re-grown the ligament between the two scraping bones during that time."

He narrowed his eyes at me, a kind of accusatory squint. "Ligaments don't regrow, Sakura. That's why old people complain about their joints and why we have a word called 'osteoporosis'."

And I narrowed my eyes a little bit, too. "_My _ligaments regrow, Kakuzu. I've seen scans of them torn and re-grown nine times. It's very possible, and would probably throw Greg House for a loop." And there wasn't anything he could say to that. Oh, snap!

At this point Hidan jumped down the stairs, yes, jumped, taking four at a time and landing on the floor clumsily on his hands and knees with the DVD case in his mouth. "Fharr Wurz! Fharr Wurz!" I guessed he was trying to say "Star Wars," but before I could ask if I was right, he had jumped right over the couch and began programming the DVD player. By programming, I mean jamming and mashing buttons, which is also how he plays video games.

Kakuzu put his hand on my head and moved me aside to better see Hidan. This made me giggle. "Hidan, your paid time off ends tomorrow. You have to go to work at three, so this is your last night of staying up till sunrise."

His cousin barely seemed to hear, and spoke only to me. "Sakura, this series is the king of all movie series. If we don't watch at least three of them before goin' to sleep, I'll commit suicide."

"Really?" Kakuzu cocked his head. "Awesome. I'll go hide 'Return of the Jedi.' Kakuzu went into the kitchen, pretending to thank God for taking away his horrible burden. He stopped a few seconds into what may have been a tirade. Maybe he'd found a Sprite that we'd missed and was chugging it. I sat on the stairway between the living room where Hidan was flailing and the kitchen were Kakuzu was quiet, and stretched my wings backwards and up the stairs, and waggled them a little. Hidan got up and stubbed his toe on the edge of the wall. He hobbled on one foot and erupted in a shower of nasty curses that made me put my lips in a thin line. Sometimes that got tiring. All the same, watching him hop around like that made me smile, and my stomach felt warm and fluttery. It felt good to have a friend to laugh at.

A couple minutes after Hidan's pain died down, he realized the DVD player had somehow come unplugged, and was muttering angrily because he had to move the very heavy TV stand to plug it back into the outlet. I heard Kakuzu coming before he tapped me on the shoulder, and I expected him to have a Sprite in his hand, but he had nothing, and his face was very, very…serious. The wideness of the eyes alone alerted me, because Kakuzu's eyes were never too wide or too narrowed unless he was angry...and he didn't seem angry.

"You lose your checkbook?" I chuckled at him.

He didn't laugh with me. "Come with me," He said, in a tight voice. My brows came together slightly at hearing him. I had never heard him sound scared before. Except when I hit him with electricity. He took my hand and led me into the kitchen and all the way to the end of the room. I blinked in realization that I'd never come to this end of the big room before, because there was nothing here but unused cabinets, so had no reason to be in that part of the room. But next to those cabinets, there was a wall broken only by a window with slightly tattered blinds over it.

"Look out there." he said, still with that tense tone.

"Why?" I asked as I moved towards the curtain. "If there's a burglar or something out there, I can take him down for yo—"

_'Oh...oh...'_

How stupid of me. I'm living like I can spend the rest of my life playing games and watching movies with Kakuzu and Hidan. But they have lives and I have lives, they are innocent and I'm being hunted and I should have left earlier for their own safety. I'd been so neck-deep in them, their sweet human life and their food and their Star Wars and their friendship that I had just blocked out everything else. And everything else came back to me in one huge, body-numbing strike, like my own electricity. I only kept standing because I was too numb for my legs to give out.

I was numb even as I reached for the turner on the blinds. I was remembering my own suffering and my silent tears and my silent self. I had been speaking for three days, but spent the previous eight years in perfect silence against monsters and madmen and tools of science. Much as I wished, those eight years would not just be shed and fall away into an abyss. I knew this as I curled my fingers along the turner and the blinds moved up to let me see outside into the night. In the backyard...demons were out there.

Kakashi, Zetsu, Deidara and Neji were all standing together out there.

"They're the other ones, aren't they?" Kakuzu asked, but I felt I didn't have to answer him.

"This is half of them," I eventually replied, and then couldn't say anything else.

Kakuzu watched them, wearily and breathing deep. "But you said you flew all night to get away from the laboratory. How could they get here so fast if none of them can fly or anything? How did they track you here from so far away? "

To keep my mind running, I ran through possibilities as quickly as I could and stacked them up like a wall before me. I hid behind them. "It means I didn't cover nearly as much distance as I thought. I might not have flown in a straight line. Maybe I even flew in circles. And the only way they could have tracked me," I paused because Deidara was looking right into the window and smiling, with smoky, animal-needy eyes and I shivered at them. "...the only way had to have been by scent. Deidara's sense of smell is incredible. Maybe, maybe the scientists saw the news story about the man who crashed a-and saw me. And knew I was near."

Neji and Kakashi's claws were so sharp and impeccable they literally gleamed when the cloud cover faded and moonlight hit them. Deidara's eyes continued to smolder and Zetsu widened his plant appendage so that it looked like a gaping mouth instead of a weakly parted jaw. A little Logic Fairy inside me said that that should have torn his shirt right open, but of course, Zetsu's shirts were always outfitted with freaking huge neck holes so it didn't matter. He just looked ridiculously burdened, like usual.

Also, all of them were wearing shock collars. Each one had a small, transparent panel which I guessed was shielding some tracking device from the outdoor elements. Of course. They even had to bring that element of my past back to me with them. Somewhere inside me was a seed of anger at that. But it was smothered by the choking, cold fear that was eating me alive inch by inch. Perhaps there was another collar waiting for me. Waiting to control me and swallow me.

"Sakura, come on! If I leave it at the main menu for too long, it'll just start!" I heard Hidan walking stiffly into the kitchen, and he must have seen us staring out the window. "Oh, God, is it the goddamn raccoons again?" Kakuzu moved out of the way, gladly, I guessed. Hidan took his place and moved the curtain further away. "Fuck." He said, and that was all. We could hear him inhale with a hiss when Deidara lifted one of his hands and bared its teeth. I watched it, and I watched him. I knew better than to look away from the eyes of a predator, save Itachi.

"I have a friend whose dad is a hunter." Hidan murmured. "He took us on hunting trips, and he gave me a shotgun once. It's up in my room under the bed. I can go get it.

I shook my head as slowly as I could. I couldn't afford any quick movements that might make them, all _four _of them, attack me and my defenseless friends. They would die. "They'd swipe it out of your hands before you could aim it, and then rip your throat out."

"Then what do we do?" Kakuzu's voice was quiet but even. I was grateful for his strength, or the convincing front of it.

"I guess…I'll go lead them away. I'm faster than they are."

One of the cousins made some kind of disapproving hiss, and then Hidan said indignantly, "Oh, don't even _try _playing hero. I have to at least try and get the shotgun."

"Either I play hero and make them move away from here, or we can all be murdered." I shot back at him, being careful not to narrow my eyes. "I won't let them murder you. You're the first good people I've ever met. I like you." That shut their mouths, as though they thought it strange that I ate their food and learned their lives and interests and had grown to like them thus.

"I'm getting the shotgun no matter what you say." Hidan said, slowly backing away. As he made turtle-speed steps away from the window. Kakashi suddenly made a face, and the black scarf over the bottom of his face sank down over a half-inch of skin. He was frowning. Suddenly he lifted his right hand and made a weird motion with it—

CRSSSH!

The glass of the window suddenly exploded. Eight years of training kept me quiet against the shock and the spray of debris, but the cousins cried out. Dozens of shards spread all over the kitchen's tile floor, and Kakuzu fell against the counter and three of them were pierced into his shoulder, and two in his thighs. "Kakuzu!" I whispered as he fell down. I grasped his arm so he wouldn't fall on the floor, and heaved him towards the counter behind him so he could support himself there. This was the first time I'd really tried to move him and he was heavy. "All you all right? Don't move. I'll take these out!"

"I...I stepped on an iron nail once. This is nothing…Check Hidan, too…"

I responded by picking the shards out of him. His response was pretend it didn't hurt. Ballsy guy.

With an unsatisfied sigh at his being over-manly, I looked over at Hidan, who was sitting on the floor. He was picking a shard out of his leg on his own. "Gaaah! Fuck! Fuck! That hurts!" I bent down and ripped the last two shards from his knee, and helped him stand. Unfortunately, all of us were barefoot at this time, and struggled to not step in any of the pieces.

Outside I heard Kakashi growling…no…laughing? I rushed to the window, reminding myself not to touch any of the last glass pieces remaining in the pane. With my excellent raptor's vision I could easily see the upward curve of Kakashi's scarf, the shaking of his broad shoulders. He was definitely laughing. It was a very deep, masculine and almost _happy_ sound that made me suddenly wish I was deaf. (But then I didn't, because, geez what an impairment it would be! Kakashi could _dance _right up to me if he wanted!)

He was laughing because he'd hurt them. He'd thrown a pebble or something and tried to pierce the glass into their faces. (Yes, a pebble, I could feel it under my toe.) And he'd surely hurt them more if given a chance. He'd kill them unless I could get their attention and lure them away. These two people were my friends; my first friends. I was not going to let them be killed because I was afraid. I _couldn't _let them get killed because I was afraid. I _wouldn't. _

Behind all this courage, a puff of logic rose up and spread like smoke: when loved ones are in danger, the human mind, perhaps the animal mind as well, says "Fuck danger!" and does whatever is needed. Now I understand that. _  
_

"Hidan, move slow and go get your shotgun." My eyes focused on Zetsu, who wore his favorite expression, a combination of hungry and desperately excited. I was surprised at myself. I thought I'd be scared out of my wits if they ever came here. Instead, I felt kind of, maybe somewhat…angry. "Help Kakuzu up the stairs. Stay in the house, hide in a closet or bathroom. Do not come out for anything. Anything!"

"Hide in the fucking bathroom? Who got raped and made you queen?"

That almost made me laugh, but I resisted the temptation. Somethinf told me it'd ruin the serious and challenging image I'm trying to build up for the other experiments. I kept a straight face and told them both, "Just do what I say, _please. _I need you two to be safe." They stared at me with wide eyes, eyes with strange, black sclera and inhuman violent irises. They both had beautiful eyes. I smiled at them both. "Please do as I say. I'll take care of this."

I rushed towards the front door. Hidan had told me the only way to the backyard was through the basement. That would mean the door leading out there would have a set of stairs leading back up to level ground. I couldn't take that route and risk being ambushed from above. No, I'd go out the front door, fly over the top of the house and rush down at them in the backyard instead. They deserved a taste of what it felt like to be ambushed.

I opened the door and…and it was one of the worst situations it could have ever been. Because there was someone standing there, with their hand held slightly in front of his face. Um...

This person had been one second away from knocking on the door. It was a boy about the cousins' age. His hair was tied up in a tight ponytail at the top of his head and all made of strands that stuck out, and he wore a green and yellow shirt with a deer on it. Two plain, black eyes stared fearfully into mine, and the silvery earrings he wore made a clinking sound that made our silence even more awkward.

"Uh, hey. Is Hidan here?" His face mildly shocked now but his voice wasn't nearly so. It was like I wasn't a bird girl, a person with really big and noticeable _wings_, but some neighbor he didn't expect to be here tonight. Maybe…he's drunk and can't be surprised right now? He doesn't look or smell drunk. "So is it his time now?"

"Huh?" I screwed up one eye, and made a face at the boy. He raised a thin brow at me—yes, raised a brow as though he were _annoyed. _"Ain't it supposed to be that when a guy dies, an angel comes to take him to Heaven? My mom used to tell me that? Or did one of the guys hire you for...some...stuff?" My eyes became normal-size again as I realized he was mistaking me for an angel and then a _prostitute, _Yeah, I'm an angel who dyed her hair pink and left her white, flowing gown at the cleaner's! All God had left was this cheap athletic getup!"I'm not an angel or a whore. And you really need to go home now."

Maybe-Drunk asked, "Why?"

"Because…because there are some thieves in the backyard."

"Uh-huh. Is Hidan in there?"

I heard the cousins coming out of the kitchen. Hidan was whispering. "Shikamaru, you picked the worst time on _fucking earth _to come here. Don't you got a girlfriend or a life or something!" And he was so, so right. God only knows what the experiments are doing right now. Creeping around the sides of the house to ambush us right here at the front door? Being dumbasses and just standing there? Please, please be dumbasses and just stay where you are.

The new boy, Shikamaru, replied with a rather casual, "I wasn't going to ask that, idiot. My dad wants to take us to the hunting reserve next Friday, and your phone was dead so I thought I'd just walk over and ask in person. You gonna come?"

"If I still have my fucking head by then!" Hidan screamed. "For you freaking information, there are four freaks of nature in my backyard and my friend has to deal with them so can you just get OUT OF THE WAY?" Shikamaru stepped aside, leaving me enough room to leap out the doorway. I took a step forward to get his attention on me.

"Shikamaru, I need you to do something for me. Take these two to your house and have them stay the night there. This is hugely important. If you don't do it, your intestines will paint the sidewalk." He was nodding a little, then his eyes caught Kakuzu, pierced in half a dozen places and I heard him say, "Whoa." Is this guy high or something?

"Shikamaru, I'll pay you back for this, but she's right. Let's go." Wasting time wasting time wasting tiiime...

"Okay, man. But you're both on the living room couches." Wasting _time! _

"Hey, I still gotta get my shotgun!"

I slapped my hands over my face. "Fucking God!" I hissed. Within a few seconds, I'd whipped up the stairs, reached under his bed, felt for the cold, hard surface of a gun and brought the thing back down the Hidan.

"You're pretty fast." Shikamaru remarked. "So, you, like...run track?" What I think he meant is probably not what he actually meant, so I ignored him.

"Please, for the love of all that is holy, Hidan, don't shoot unless they provoke you first! But that shouldn't happen because I'm going to lure them away. I'll take them to the woods and lose them there. I'll fly away from them. If I don't come back, just don't worry about it."

"Are you absolutely sure Deidara can't fly?" Kakuzu, tossing his medical knowledge out the window, apparently, scratched at a puncture wound from a shard he'd pulled out.

"Stop picking at that!" I slapped his hand. "I'm sure Deidara doesn't know how to fly. He couldn't have been taught in the time I was away from him. And I don't think he's ever even spread his wings. He's an earthbound as all the others." Friggin' finally, they could be on their way. "Shikamaru, you live in walking distance. Exactly how far?" His reply was a muted "five blocks", to which I said, "Okay, that's a good, wide space. Far away. You, get the heck out and start moving." I pulled on Kakuzu's sleeve and he and his cousin lumbered outside onto the porch. "Now get out of here. Stay at Shikamaru's, lock the doors and shut the shades. I'll find you again."

We heard echoing sounds then. They sounded like the howls of a great and furious wolf, and they echoed throughout the neighborhood. I saw birds from a nearby tree taking flight in fear. _'I know how you feel.' _I felt their fear and a kind of recognition. I wasn't a wild, bloodthirsty animal like the other experiments, but I can't deny I am also an animal. I was animal enough to understand this sound.

They were calling me. They were calling me to them. And I was going to go to them.

I was going to go and lead them away from my friends, and maybe I'd get a good lightning strike in there, too. With these noises in my ears, I wished the three young men good luck, spread my wings—the feeling was a pleasant almost-distraction—and got my running start. I jumped up a few feet in the air and glided up, pretending I wasn't actually doing this in a well-lit residential area and someone might have a camera or just a loud voice or hey, maybe there's a traffic jam nearby full of people who can see me collectively and maybe somebody will actually think I'm an angel and do something ridiculous in the name of God or a riot could start due to people thinking I was any number of things from the next Roswell to a seagull and oh geez I so dislike my brain sometimes.

Shikamaru watched me a moment longer—now _there _we go, he actually looked shocked beyond belief now!—and then went to Kakuzu's side, helping him walk across the street. I hovered in that spot in the air for a moment, then flapped once, propelling myself upwards. The wind was in my face, and the cool, almost cold temperature of it gave me confidence. The air, the cool and free air, was my territory. From here, I'd get rid of these intruders invading the ground below it.

I flew up the side of the house and over it. They were still in the same spot—four of the worst creations of science, staring up at me. I must have been silhouetted against the moon. I saw my shadow on the ground, huge and dark, hovering near them, big enough to cover three of them. At that time the idea of luring them off seemed less appealing than beating, than hurting. Maybe I could lure them away and hurt them at the same time? Yeah, I can do that!

I'm fast, I'm clever, I'm mean, I can shoot electricity. What the hell can't I do? These men, no, these animals, these wild animals, are going down! They and all they represented had been my sole nightmares to a lifetime. I was done with their torture and their predatory grins and fangs and horrific hunts. Half of my suffering at Chambers had been their fault. They would pay for making me so afraid.

"You want a fight, you bastards?" I clapped my hands together, and when they hit, blue sparks flew around my hands. I hadn't expected that, but couldn't bring myself to feel surprised or even to wonder at how I was generating and controlling this energy. For now, all I needed was to cause pain with it. I pulled my hands apart, and both fists had dancing blue sparks around them.

"_Come and get it!" _

Without warning to those beasts, I pulled my wings to my body and dropped down, aiming a strike at Zetsu.

I was startled when Zetsu suddenly just wasn't _there_ anymore, and it took me a precious second to realize he'd used his ability. He'd become part of the ground, sunk down into it so quickly I hadn't seen him go. Since when could he do that so quickly? My fist hit the ground pointlessly and I flapped again to go up and be airborne again. I felt the breeze on my bare foot as Zetsu's hand came up from the ground, nearly grabbed me and pulled me down. Fucker was speedy now, but he couldn't even think of a new trick!

Fear grabbed me like Zetsu's hand would have, as I remembered all the times I had run away from him just to stay alive. Well, Zetsu couldn't become part of the sky. I was safe from him as long as I could keep flying. And I had plenty of strength left in me. More than enough. At this point, Neji and Deidara came at me together, one from left and one from right, preparing to jump and attack. I flapped once and scaled twenty feet higher. Neji scowled at me and began falling back to the ground, and Deidara was falling back down too, but he grinned and showed the palms of his hands to me.

Fuck! His tongues! The tongues of his hands that can _whip_! I twisted in midair and one tongue lashed three feathers off my right wing. It grabbed a feather on it's way back into the mouth and held it between it's teeth like a handsome dancer would a rose.

There was few better ways for him to say, "I want to eat you."

I glared, and as Deidara descended down those last few feet to the ground, I saw the wind whip his hair away from his left eye, and I saw a black device covering it. That must be what they put on his eye after I struck it. Or maybe I'd hurt him so badly that he didn't _have _a right eye anymore, and that device functioned as an artificial eye? Should I assume he has full vision now or half? Well, my shooting him was accidental, but I sure as hell don't regret it now! With pride and fury roaring in me now, I pointed my palm at Deidara, and sure as the sun does rise, a streak of blue lightning appeared like smoke before my palm and blasted towards Deidara.

He looked up and saw the bolt coming at him. With something like a yelp, a sound that made me feel oh-so-good, Deidara tore out of the way at the last possible moment, and the lightning struck the ground inches from his foot, creating a tiny, jagged and smoking crater. (Dude.)

"Come on! You came to fight me, didn't you? Come get me!" I did two loops in the air and flew off towards the woods just some miles from Hidan and Kakuzu's house. Beyond Hidan and Kakuzu's home, there was another few blocks of housing area, (if the lord is kind, no one in the area will look up) and beyond that there was nothing but trees. Beyond these woods were a few highways, I could see them from up here, and beyond that was another expanse of woods, this one completely unbroken by roads, houses, or anything else. I would lead them there, many miles out, get in a few good electric shots, lay a false trail that would lead them farther off, and come back for Hidan and Kakuzu…oh, and maybe Shikamaru, too. After that, we'd…we'd…

Well, I'll have plan soon. I always do. But I'll think about that after I've taken care of these guys!_'Speaking of these guys,' _I thought, scanning the trees below me. _'Where's Kakashi? He hasn't attacked me yet.' _I scanned the trees, and vaguely heard light crashes in the branches as Neji and Deidara followed me—Zetsu was probably underground. Where would Kakashi be? The only ability he'd ever shown me was his wild claw attacks, so he might have something else, something I'd never seen in store for me. I'd better be careful.

He wasn't anywhere! I didn't hear him or smell him or sense him in any other way and animal can sense. I crossed the highways, passing over cars, almost too high above them to be seen by anyone looking up, and then I lowered myself several hundred feet, looking and listening again for Kakashi. Yeah, I wanted to be cautious about him, but it was getting frustrating at this point. It's been far too long and I'm worrying about the plans _he _might have for me.

I had the other three experiments right in the palm of my hands, why not Kakashi? Maybe because he's the oldest, he think he's the smartest—he is NOT, mind you!—and thinks he's big and bad enough to play games with me. I guess he can't wait to have an eye to match Deidara's.

With both my palms facing the forest below, and shot electricity down into the trees, leaving two black holes where they'd burnt and pierced branches and leaves. But no silver-haired wolverine mutant men. This was ranging out of "worrisome" and more into "irritating." I shot more and more electric bolts into the trees, and then straight through to the ground. hoping to drive him above the treetops where I could see him. Nothing. Nothing, nothing. A group of fearful birds taking flight at my shock, and more nothing. My range became wider and wider, and the lightning strikes became bigger and bigger as I grew angrier. At last one bolt struck a tree and set it and part of its neighbor aflame.

The heat from it buoyed me up in the air, and made it effortless to hover, to gape. I'd caused a fire. That would spread to at least four more trees, before the space between them and the other neighboring trees became too great to cross and spread more. Were there animals in those trees? Sleeping squirrels and birds? They would know how to flee fire, wouldn't they? Yes, yes they would! Besides, I'm doing this to help them! No squirrel or fox or robin would want a monster rampaging their forest! I was doing Mother Nature a favor. If I killed Kakashi, it would be for the good of everyone and everything!

So when I saw a tiny, tiny silver gleam that was surely the glint of moonlight off a claw, I shot out an open hand and fired a gigantic lightning bolt twice as thick as the usual ones. My hands felt hot as the bolt struck a tiny space between two trees, very near the gleam, and promptly electrocuted and burnt up everything within a radius as wide around as a house. (I'm sorry, Nature!).

The gleam was gone. Everything within the strike range was burnt black. The leaves of trees seemed to disappear, and the nearby trunks and branches were burnt. Nearly all the grass had been burnt away, leaving only black dirt. I looked around, eyes raptor-sharp, for any more experiments that might have been hiding in the shadows of nearby trees. My hands were open and ready to shoot more electricity if needed, or deliver bone-crunching punches. I flew lower, circling, marveling in the fact that I'd maybe, maybe _hit_ Kakashi.

It would take more than one strike to kill him, but the fact that I had struck him, or hadn't but tried to, brought such an ecstasy to me I shivered as it reverberated up and down my spine. It shook me so much that I had to land, or crash trying to say in the air. And it was an awkward, shaky, landing, too. An embarrassing spectacle, if anyone was watching.

It occurred to me that I was tired, or just feeling the loss of adrenaline, as I was panting and shaking slightly. "Take that, you monster." I murmured with my new, exhausted voice, and wiped my hands together as though wiping off grease or dirt. I raised my voice, knowing he could be around here somewhere, watching, bleeding, and in pain. "I wonder how long that wound will take to heal!" I was opening my wings, chuckling to myself, and I was about to take the step that would start me off on the journey back.

But something happened. Something horrible.

A white hand reached out of the ground and grasped my ankle. The hand was cool like the grass I'd walked on just after escaping from Chambers and landing, and made me cold as the blackest winter of the Arctic. _Zetsu had a grip on me. _

Escape. Had to escape. I flapped as hard as I could, so hard that I dragged his whole arm, plant-thing and torso out of the ground. The plant appendage opened to reveal his split face. Zetsu appeared to be…gritting his teeth, having trouble holding on! Good! Very, very, very good!

I pulled harder, flapping my wings like a raging animal, making a powerful wind, and I even gave a kick to his hand, which sent an electric, cold thrill through me. Wait! Why didn't I think of this before! Retarded, retarded self! I showed my open hand to Zetsu, and both his evil eyes went wide before a blue, electric streak struck the plant-creature's shoulder. Zetsu groaned and immediately the wound began to spurt blood through a hole I'd shocked through the shirt, but he didn't let go.

Has he always had such endurance, such tolerance to pain? For the length of one flap I stared at him and marveled, and he showed his strange golden eyes to me. He looked disappointed, and the tooth-edges of his plant-thing curled. But what kind of judge was I now, almost captured and on the verge of losing it?

It didn't matter, for that expression was gone as soon as it had gotten there. Just a second or so later, Zetsu's face warped into a smile once again. The feathers on my wings bristled, and I felt something coming from behind me. Turning my head around, I saw the background of the scene first. Deidara and Kakashi stood to the side of the burnt clearing, in the dark and dappled shadows of trees. I didn't see the foreground of the scene until it was too late. Coming right at me was Neji with his metal dollar dully shining and his claws spread. I gasped, the only thing I could do, as I realized that I had been tricked by a completely neanderthal plan.

It'd been Deidara and Kakashi's job to bait me, tempt me, and when I finally landed, Zetsu and Neji would bring me down. Come to think of it, I'd gotten far too angry in this fight, tempted by their willingness to fight me, by my stupid need to beat them and hurt them. It sucks to have such a temper. Here, now, it would probably be the death of me.

You know, it would have been nice if my old Chambers personality had come up a little. If I had been able to be silent and avoid the males at all costs, stay absolutely alone and be absolutely un-trusting like I had always done in the Chambers building, and attack solely from the air, from a safe zone, all those things I would unfailingly do, I might have won. I might not be about to die. But I was now. I'd been too emotional about the fight and about them, and now I'd pay for it. Neji would pounce on me, rip my throat out, kill me. I didn't have to time to shoot him with electricity. I was still three feet in the air with a monster holding my foot and keeping my earthbound. My mind was full of pictures of gore and failure, and Karin taunting me.

I saw him leap up several feet in the air to my level and God played a joke and made me see it in slow motion. It was unreal how determined he looked, how triumphant now that he knew he'd won and there were no scientists to stop this trial.

Then the wind was knocked out of me as Zetsu let go of my foot and Neji's body slammed onto mine.

We fell together and my back hit the ground. His hands held my wrists on the ground to my left and right, preventing me from shooting electricity at him, and I was on my back with my stomach and neck exposed, and a monster experiment sitting on me. This was the number one most vulnerable position _ever. _If he wanted to smash my ribs open and rip out my heart and eat it, he could do it and I could do nothing.

As Neji stared down at me, panting and smirking with totally undisguised pride, I realized that I was still very, very tense. If I went limp, I would be considered submissive. I'd be admitting he had won and he could do whatever he wanted. _'But I will not do that. I do not, will not, give in! Not even now! I might still turn the tide...maybe...' _

"If you're going to kill me, you better hurry up and finish it!" I spat. Neji raised a brow at me and flicked one brown cat ear. Of course. Since when could animal-brained Neji understand a word in English? But shouldn't me shouting give some kind of message? If you shout at a dog, at least the dog knows you're angry! "Come on! I know even wild animals like you know the meaning of _kill!_ If I'm going to die now, I want to die with some scrap of dignity!"

The smirk widened, and for a second I thought he understood my talking, that he was about to tell me he'd make my death slow and agonizing and hellish. A part of my brain might have even suspected it. I was completely, utterly, mind-blown, to say the fucking _least, _when the first piece of that prediction actually happened.

"Whatever made you think…I was going to kill you?"

What...in..._what?_

"You can't talk." Don't I sound smart. But who the heck cares. _How is he talking. _

"You can hear us! This...this is a miracle." Wait, that didn't come from Neji's mouth. That was a new voice. Fearfully, I turned my head back to see Zetsu, half buried of the ground, plant limb opened. Zetsu. Zetsu had talked to me, too.

"Did you hear me, Sakura? I said it's a miracle...that you can understand us."

_"Maybe you've had too much human clouding up your brain. Maybe your animal side has control now." _Was that a _third _voice? It couldn't be! It had been Zetsu's mouth that had moved! Or, it had been the black side of his face that had moved. And that was a distinctly deeper, more chilling voice…How can he be…how can he have separate voices, be two different people—I mean plants—I mean…entities? Yes, entities. How can Zetsu be two different entities?

I could hear the scrunching of dirt and grass bits that meant Deidara and Kakashi were walking over, and I heard murmurings of their own voices. They sounded anxious, nervous, even. Kakashi started saying something to his companion, a long and drawn-out sentences surely with many verbs, articles and parts of speech Kakashi is far too stupid to know and be able to say. Deidara said something short and choppy but I tuned it out, like a television screen showing static.

This was not happening. My enemies, these beasts, were talking to me. They had me in their grasp, they could stomp on my ribcage if if they wanted, but they _weren't! _

Something had to be wrong. They must be tricking me. Or maybe my mind is tricking me into thinking they're talking, but really they're doing nothing but making their usual animal noises. Because there is some sort of problem here, _somewhere._

Now I turned my head back up to Neji, who still lay over me and held my wrists in a grip of iron. My brain didn't even care how weird this pose was. My brain was very busy with other thoughts. My brain was considering the fact that maybe it was stoned or been paralyzed. My brain was about to explode.

"This is a nightmare." I concluded, staring into Neji's strange, white eyes. "Or I'm losing my mind. You can't be talking to me. You can't possibly understand me. I'm having a buildup of adrenaline. It's hit critical mass and is making me hear voices. Oh, if I'm hearing voices I really am losing my mind. I'm done. I'm so done." All through my rambling, Neji shook his head, denying what _had _to be the truth, slowly tossing his long hair one way and the next.

"Don't get delusional now," I looked away from Neji and saw Kakashi crouching next to me. He had his twin scarves as usual, which covered his left eye and forehead, and the other his mouth and nose, but the bottom one was crinkled and curved the slighest bit upward. Kakashi looking down and smiling at me. Smiling. Thank God I have an empty bladder. "You could get even crazier than you just were, shooting little forest animals. You burned up a bird. You know, you're always the last person I had thought would hurt birds."

_'Well maybe Sasori and Naruto will pop out of the woods and start a conversation about democracy! They can talk about the recession or cereal or Schadenfreude and make this all even more lifelike!' _

Deidara sat down, not caring that his wingtips were dragging in dirt. His hand reached out and touched my hair. Someone help me. "Stop this right now. You're not even really here." I said, and tried to recoil from him, but with Neji holding me there, it was both useless and embarrassing. "I'm going to believe you're all a nightmare until either I die and realize it was real or I wake up on the couch and realize I was right."

"You're simply scared because you can understand our talk." That was Zetsu…I think. If the black side sounded evil and dark, this must have been the white side, whose voice would have sounded comforting if only it was human. "We know how hard it is for you to calm down in our presence…but you'll have to anyway, I'm afraid…We have something to tell youuu…" The sentence faded into a soft growl. What now? Was my brain reverting back to normal? Back to hearing animal noises from them again?

"Is it the amount of time it'll take to disembowel me?" My tone was flat and, in fact, did an all right job of hiding the still-fresh surprise at hearing their almost-perfect English.

"Why are you so obsessed with death?" Deidara moved his hand over me, and the tongue darted out quickly to lick my forehead. I flinched and stared wide-eyed at the weird gesture, and I remembered when I had first escaped Chambers, when Deidara had licked the side of my neck. I hadn't had very much time to be scared or freaked out about that, but I had the time for this, now. And it was weird. It was borderline sensual. Brought on thoughts of rape, something I'd never had to fear but now, held down like this, maybe...maybe, how 'bout we think about something else, all right! "Why do you think we're going to kill you, mm? We're not."

I said nothing, because, hell, I didn't believe it. I believe that as much as I believe the oceans have no fish.

"Of course you are. You don't get to act one way for eight years in a row and switch now that you finally have me. I'm tired of you messing around with me. If you're going to end it right here, then do it. In a way, I'd like...some peace."

Kakashi leaned over slightly so I had to look him in both his eyes, his black and red. Inside, I cowered. "Sakura, what you said outside the lab...stunned us. We didn't know you thought that way. We loved those times we chased you in the white rooms because we thought you loved it. It was playful. It was a time we smiled and enjoyed ourselves. We thought...we were taking care of you." (What? _What? _Fucking idiot!) "But you really, truly thought we were out to kill you. Is that right?"

"Of course that's right! There's absolutely no reason to think otherwise!" They think they can attack me, try to grab me with their clawed hands and bare their fangs at me for eight years, and then suddenly decide no, that was actually playful behavior and they meant well the entire time? Bull_shit. _

His face deflated. Absolute liar though he is, I admit the expression looked painfully real. "...I'm...I'm really sorry you couldn't understand us before. We tried to tell you over and over again. We didn't expect you reply, just understand." Here he paused and from the movement of the scarf over his mouth, I think he closed his mouth and parted it again. "We also never expected you to talk. But we made plans to try and teach you. Neji and Naruto were with you a white room together once, and they tried to teach you to talk then."

"You are not the ones I would seek out in order to learn proper English." I said, and he and Zetsu both looked disappointed at something.

"Well...your language was already set with the humans and _their _English. Perhaps if you hadn't listened to the humans talking and learned their language first, could have understood each other. I'm sure you would have been happier that way."

Huh. He understands how languages are learned. That...shows reasoning. There is a little piece of me that is impressed, but fear is smothering it.

"What is your point, Kakashi? If I had learned your language first, whatever dialect of it we are apparently speaking now, then what would I have understood?" I said this as though I gave a damn. I could sense the bloodbath that would be coming soon, that would make this whole playact not matter.

Then Deidara burst out, "That we were playing with you! Laughing! We constantly asked you if you were sad and if you needed us!" My heart hammered so hard, so fearfully in my chest that it hurt. Now up and standing above me, he covered his face with one of his hands and dragged the other one over his sleeve and then his bare arm. It was a tight, distressed expression. So perfectly executed I could have placed him as human. What an actor. "This isn't right." He murmured against his arm, and his wingtips shivered. "This isn't how we're supposed to talk for the first time, mm." He came down again, on his knees and leaning slightly over me. "I played with you in the white rooms, every time hoping a little bit that you might laugh, or try to say something to me. But never things like this.".

He held his distressed front, and inwardly I raged against it. "Playing." I repeated. He nodded. It took some effort, some seriously huge effort, actually, to keep my voice level. "You call what you did playing? You stared at me like meat, and attacked me, every time. With everything you had. With your _teeth_. And you call it playing." He nodded, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Zetsu do the same. "Well...you're boys. You play rough."

I meant this to be scathing. But they grinned. And Deidara! Deidara was now so un-distressed that he started to blush.

He was the next one to reply, in fact. "Of course we grinned at you, 'cause we had fun. And we grabbed at you 'cause that's how you play Predator and Prey. You hunt somebody else and they try to get away. You both do whatever you can to win. It's no harm, mm."

"No harm, huh? What about when Kisame tried to drown me? Moved in front of me every time I tried to move up for air? That's harmless?" I tried to sit up, but Neji was dead-set on keeping me held down. "Or what about when Naruto uses his power? Turns the very air into a projectile and _punches _me with it? That's not how you play. Anything."

Actors could benefit from observing Kakashi's hurt, crinkled brow. "That's...that's because you offered no fight." Kakashi explained. "It doesn't hurt you if you stay limp when it touches you. His powers use muscle tension against the enemy and hurt them that way. I'm surprised you didn't learn that from the scientists. And I don't...I don't want to say it was your fault you were hurt by that, but it was."

"He told me about that day. He was trying to goad you into fighting back, to prove you have strength." Neji told me with a flick of his brown cat ear. "They put him to sleep somehow at the end of that trial and you just swam up past him to get air. I heard the scientists saying that."

_'They listened to the scientists when they talked? Like I always did? How much did they listen...? That doesn't matter! Back to subject at hand!' _

I tried to explain this slowly, like to a child or an intelligent animal. "If I fought back, it would be an anomaly. They would investigate it. They would cut open my head to study the neurons in my brain, or make slits in my muscles to see how quickly they grew back together. I saved myself some suffering by offering the same old cowardly behavior every time, and gave them more reason to try something new like the outdoor trial. I made progess a little bit faster and my plan progressed a little bit more."

"It worked." Zetsu said from the ground.

Oh, gee, did it? "Yes, and I was having a great time of it up until twenty minutes ago."

"I _did _believe you were mute, Sakura. And it hurt me to know that." Neji tried to hold my eyes. I switched my gaze from pupil to pupil for my own sanity. "Sometimes I'd think about trying to teach you how to talk." The very idea of that was so dumb it practically put me in stitches but I was not in a laughing mood so settled for a little giggle and pitying smile. He did not take it the cynical way I had hoped. I tried to avoid the problem by looking away, and right there in the path of my gaze was Deidara, and his hair that moved just enough to let me see his covered eye. The device on it had been changed. It was smoother, darker, and had a slightly biger lens. I must have broken the other one, but I wonder exactly how long it took to break, and if it hurt any part of his skin beneath.

"Do you have that because of what I did?" I asked him. He nodded. "Can you see out of that eye at all?"

He chuckled and nodded again, adding, "A little better than before, actually, hm. And we each got our own collar like yours, but it's for tracking, not so much shocking." The latter statement I filed mindlessly away, having already guessed at it. Not that I had planned to use my electricity to shock Deidara's eye that night, but I still felt that some plan had backfired, to know that he was better off than before. It made me cringe and want to squirm around with disgust, to know he was even better than before. I did squirm a little, and Neji's hands clamped tighter around my wrists.

Kakashi raised his head slightly and asked, "What if Neji lets your hands go? Where will you go to?"

Is he serious? "An undisclosed location far, far away."

"Someplace cold, yes?"

No answer was needed. He knew he was right. It was no secret back in the lab that Number 9 reacted more positively to areas with...you know, air conditioning amped up to level ten. "You know, we listen to them, too. But probably not nearly as much as you did. I remember hearing Hayate talk about how relaxed you were in a forty-five degree room. You'd fly to Canada, wouldn't you? Or someplace even farther north?"

"It doesn't matter." I spat back. "Suppose I did choose Canada. It's a massive country with thousands upon thousands of miles of land. But even with the eight of you working together, and my constant flying around, it would be months before you even glimpsed me. Years, I'd bet, if I challenged myself and flew overseas. It's really very easy. A very easy way to never see any of you again." Suddenly I was sweating. In Pacific-Northwest January.

"You're not leaving." It was Deidara's voice. His clawed hand rubbed against my forehead again, lower on my face like a total creep...this is categorized as petting. He is petting me. "It's funny how you think you're getting away when you trapped and surrounded and outnumbered, all at once, mm. We got you. We won the game, finally!" His smile was big and proud, like a kid who caught his first fish. Which is a metaphor Hidan told me.

I didn't look at him, but I could feel the tip of his hair on my head and knew he had bent his head nearer to mine. "Also, dunno if you know this, but my sense of smell is one of the most powerful in the world. Even if you went up to middle-of-nowhere Canada, I could still find you, mm. I could catch your scent a hundred miles away, Sakura. I _always _know where you are."

This was a revelation to me, the earth-shattering sort that destroys men and destroys cities. I felt the horror of it sinking in, gathering in my bones and shaking them. I stopped them only with a backdraft, a traffic jam, of thought: yes, Deidara's sense of smell was powerful but could it really be as_ insanely_ powerful as he says? Was the curve of his nasty smile a knowing one, a lying one? A bluff? And if not, what in the hell is the scienctific excuse of the _parrot _experiment getting a better olfactory system than than the fox or wolverine?

These thoughts drifted through, calmed me. A quick analysis, a quick critical study of things, made me feel better. Enough to laugh at him a little. "Deidara, I escaped Chambers' laboratory, against everyone and everything around me. Escaping from you is nothing in comparison. I've been through worse than whatever you think you can trap me with. And once I get through...it, I'll get through it and..." I saw something in the sky, and my sentence trailed off as I stared at it. Kakashi cocked his head, unsure of why I had stopped speaking, but I didn't care.

_"Get through it and...?"_ Zetsu's black side pressed.

"That...is that...?" As Neji was holding my wrists down, I managed to point a finger upward. They followed the line of my finger and my eyes and stared up at the night sky, and saw tiny white things falling from it.

"It's snow," Kakashi stated, or should I say _stained, _because this was the first time I'd ever seen snow and he was soiling it with his monster presence. "The scientists say every snowflake in the world is different."

"Ah, we saw this last week didn't we?" Neji watched the white, little things fall all around us without making so much as a sound. They collected on his ears and melted from the heat there. I felt them doing the same on my wings, and my exposed arms and legs. It was cool and ticklish. It was delightful. Especially that now that it was here, the other experiments were no longer staring at me. But I felt the slightest bit cheated, that they saw this before me.

"When did you see snow?" I asked, and tried to make my voice smooth, quiet. Forgettable among this.

"A week before you left, we saw it." Zetsu's pale half explained. He still only had part of his torso above ground "The rest of us were taken outside, to get used to the outdoor environment. It snowed while we were out there. Naruto thought the flakes were nanobots and were going to get in his body and infect him, so he attacked them."

I was too stunned by the snow to offer a sort of reply to something that sounded similar to the type of weirdness I might dream about. I watched the tiny white pieces fall onto my whire tee and disappear there. Even in my short sleeves and shorts, and sitting outside in the middle of January, I felt comfortable. I attribute this to a wonderfully high blood circulation, which keeps my extremeties and most other parts of me from freezing over. Science was on my side in this situation. And I loved it. Snow. I loved it.

"This is beautiful." I said.

"No, this is." Someone's hand went into my hair, and slowly whisked the tangles out of it. I didn't care. They couldn't pull me away from this phenomenon.

Someone was purring. I acknowledged them by flicking my wingtip, and forced myself to ignore the animal sound. Even the experiments' purring, which almost always prophesized them pouncing at me, could not distract me from the wonderful epiphany that snow was white, the color of Chambers, and yet not tainted by them. I felt an increase in the density of flakes. I began counting them. First by threes, then by sevens when three was not fast enough. Around five hundred eleven, I could see frost forming in the dirt out of the corner of my eye. Around five hundred and ninety, Neji let go of my hands.

My mind told me I had to get airborne now, _now, now nownownow_, to escape these four beasts. I knew it was perfectly true, but I only moved my wings to let the heated parts catch cold snowflakes. I don't think Deidara's hand ever left it's place on my neck. If the tongue licked me again, I don't think I felt it. It was still in shock. Shock of snow!

BAM!

Then a silver sporadic bullet shot past Zetsu's ear, near my arm, and god_dammit _why didn't I use thier distraction and leave earlier? Immediately, he turned around the face the intruder, and pulled himself up completely out the ground. I stood up at the same time, prepared to attack. But as I stood up I saw Kakashi was in front of me, and it occurred to me that maybe he was there so that I couldn't be shot. But I found that insulting, unfortunately for him, so I moved around him, to the side. He didn't try to get in front of me again.

"Hikers or hunters?" Zetsu's white half muttered. Slowly, he rose from the ground, and more and more of his body and dark clothes emerge.

"No." It was Kakashi who answered, flexing his claws. "It's them_."_ It was numbingly obvious who _them _was. But I was almost shocked out of it when a second bullet passed by, and Neji caught it—_in his teeth. _

He spat it out, sticking out his tongue stupidly at the horrible flavor of it. The five of us stood in a line, as a wall, ready to attack. I was in the middle. My hearing, though finely tuned, isn't as great as my vision. None of my senses detected anything wrong, any strange presence, but the other experiments clearly did. How they could, when I couldn't, is a mystery to me, and an insult. I burned at the fact that they were more aware than me.

Out of nowhere, Zetsu leapt at me and I instantly jumped out of his reach. "Dodge us! Dodge our pouncing like you always would!" Both halves of his faced screamed this at me as he jumped into a blackened tree trunk like it was some kind of pool of water. He melted into the structure. I was completely confused when Deidara made a raged cry and attacked, too. He opened his hands and both his long whip-tongues lashed out at me. I twisted around backwards and sideways to avoid them.

_'That was on purpose. He missed my legs on purpose.' _Deidara had never missed on purpose before, ever. Had I misjudged? Did he have vision impairment after all, or was he luring me into a different direction to be pushed closer to someone else? I took the clear option and dodged again, and avoided the slicing, grabbing claws of Kakashi, to whom Deidara had shoved me closer. His arm and a following rush of air blasting over my head and took off two of my feathers.

Things were coming back to normal. All except for the fact that nowadays, I prefer to fight back. So I sprung up on the power of one leg and rammed my elbow into Kakashi's shoulder. The crack it made upon impact was more satisfying than Sweettarts.

With a pained grunt, the wolverine-creature drew back and Neji came from behind him leaped off his back like a springboard. Claws extended, he began falling towards me, and I clapped my palms together to bring the electricity to life again. With a rush of unknown energy around my palm, a blue spear of pure energy blasted towards him, but he twisted in midair, and the strike shot aimlessly into the snowy sky. Lightning from the ground.

"Keep attacking! Keep going!" Kakashi came at me again, and I inhaled with a hiss at two kicks that came my way. It would only be seconds, surely, before Kakashi returns to using his claws, his best and favorite weapons. Kakashi lashed out his feet time and time again, and it mixed in with Deidara's tongues whipping in between us. It occurred to me that he hadn't once used his bombing ability since we'd last seen each other...what, two days ago? Two perfect days.

"Bastards!" I growled, and whirled around with a kick that cracked my ankle and made Zetsu screech. "Liars, all of you!"

"No we're _not_!" Neji cried. He had the voice of a screeching housecat.

"You can't smell it? Scientists are coming in cars. Karin and Anko are up front." It was Zetsu that spoke this time, and I jumped several feet in the air to avoid both his hands grabbing my feet. He made a groaning, bellowing sound that told me how pissed off he was at missing his target.

Far away from all of them now, close to the tree line, that is, cover, I landed. "Why would you tell me that?" I cried across the distance.

Neji's face was screwed up with anxiety, his tone, more so. "We won't let you be taken back there! You'll never go back there!"

Another destructive revelation. But I kept myself together. Told myself it was another lie. "Why should I believe that? Why?"

"You want proof?" Kakashi's one visible eye went wide and he made tight, angry fists as he faced me. "We spent our lives trying to reach you and touch you, and now we're letting you get away, isn't that proof enough?" Deidara either stiffened, made a spasm, or both. He made this action and snapped his neck angrily to glare at Kakashi, growing low and loud as his blue wings trembled in what I thought was anger. Kakashi's replying snarl had just the same tone. They clearly were frustrated at me escape.

Two or three more bullets shot near the tips of my wings, and I moved in time to dodge them. Kakashi had been right. The bullets had landed in the tree trunks behind me, and I could smell the medical, sickly smell that they gave off. They were in fact darts, not bullets, filled with enough tranquilizing drugs (Rompun, I was sure) to kill a normal human in seconds, but knock me out cold in minutes.

He'd been right about Karin and Anko, too. Now, they'd gotten closer, with my raptor-vision I could cars coming through the great sheild of trees, and even the tiny, brilliantly red speck that could only be Karin's hair. They were coming from far in front of me. They'd see the backs of the male experiments when their jeeps came rolling in through the trees. Zetsu raised his head and howled, and came running at me. This was unusual, I thought to strengthen my weak legs. He always sank into the ground or floor and hardly ever ran. His fists came at me, and he laced our hands together. Immediately I pushed against them, and we were in a contest to knock each other away or down.

"This is the one time I'll let you fly off." the white side murmured. _"Now listen to us carefully__. You will do as we say!" _My eyes went even harder with defiance, but Zetsu continued talking. "Buffalo Jump. There is a cliff far north, up in Canada...called Buffalo Jump. You'll go there, and wait there for the others. They will meet you there, and so will we."

I pressed my hands harder against Zetsu's, and he was pushed back three steps. "And what if I take off right now and fly to Europe?"

Zetsu's green, long fingers held tighter to mine. He was holding my fucking hand. _"I don't want to threaten you. But I will. This is for our friends, our brothers. This is the one thing they want, and they will have it!" _

"They'll have what? My flesh? It's not happening!" I pushed against Zetsu's hands again and applied my electricity. I saw traces of sky-blue dancing around our fingers, and crawling down to his wrists. He growled and gritted his teeth, even backed up one step, but regained ground so quickly I was forced to go back two. In the background, I could hear cars and their engines coming closer and closer, and somebody snarling merrily, as though cheering Zetsu on in a fight.

"Don't make me threaten you. Please. I don't want to. Don't…make me." Those words made my feathers stand on end, like claws, a thousand claws ready to rip open his evil, insolent face. How could Zetsu threaten me? I could electrocute him so hard, his heart would stop beating; how dare he threaten me!

So I told him just that. "Zetsu, the days in which you could threaten me are done. You can't do anything to me."His face remained irritatingly impassive. "Why don't you tell me your threat anyway, let's see how much I shake in my boots."

"I will only use that as a last resort." Zetsu's eyes narrowed; he looked like he was getting ticked off. "Come to Buffalo Jump, Sakura. Come to us..."

"No!"

_"Then the humans Kakuzu and Hidan will die!"_

Zetsu pushed me a final time, and I was shoved into the trees, the trees that were still green and lush, and out of range of the vegetation-burning lightning I'd shot before. I heard the scientists in their jeeps clearly now, and Neji and Kakashi snarling like the animals they were. Many of them started yelling: "Look! Look, they're all standing down there!"; "Aah! I've found a grey feather!"; "Yes, she's been here, and recently!"

I stayed as still as stone in the bushes and plants, hidden from the scientists' sight, but with a perfect view of them. I saw Karin, wearing her white labcoat and some snow boots, running out of a blue jeep with large wheels. "Look at this imprint in the grass. Her skinny ass was sitting right in this spot. This can't be more than twenty minutes old! All of you, spread out and search!"

She must have meant the experiments. Neji and Deidara headed away from me, blasting opposite directions into the trees. Kakashi and Zetsu turned and began sprinting in my direction—oh, _fuck!_—but the both of them whisked so close past me that my hair was ruffled by the breeze they'd made. Or had that been…their hands ruffling my hair as they ran by?

The rest of me should have been ruffled, too. But that wasn't the proper word for it. I was...disturbed. And quiet. I was unsure of what to do. For now, I guessed, I should just sit here in silence and watch, and think, like I always used to do. I pictured Shikamaru, Hidan and Kakuzu, and then took the latter two out of the picture. It was an ugly picture without them in it. That image...wasn't real. No. Hidan and Kakuzu would never disappear. Would never be killed. I would care for and protect them always.

How could they? The experiments didn't know where the cousins went, where I sent them while I fought. While Kakuzu, Shikamaru and Hidan went away, I was luring the experiments in the other damn direction! They had only seen me looking out a window with those two! How could they know that they meant to much to me? But somehow they must know that they mean a lot to me, or they wouldn't have threatened to kill them. Could I take the two of them away and hide them somewhere? Maybe in Florida, or some tiny, deserted town where the male experiments would never look?

What was I doing, committing to this plan like I couldn't do anything about it? Submitting to a control Zetsu had put over me with a death threat? How _dare_ he! If only Zetsu were here now, I would give him such a bloody, bone-breaking beating he'd never be able to stand up again, and he'd never want to stand up again anyway, since I'd cut up his weird freaking plant-thing with a steak knife till it was a Christmas tree, yeah, he'd be sorry he threatened my only friends! I _hate_ him! I...I have to _think_!

There was still the mind-blowing matter that _for some reason, I understood their language, _and that they threatened people who were with me under the assumption that I cared for their well-being. They were smart enough to know just from looking at me standing next to those two that they were my friends. Smart enough to know that they'd would matter more to me than my own wing. Right…?

Okay, that's giving me some seriously bad vibes. Think about something else. Think, think! You can think for hours on end, self! Come on! Oh, here's a subject: were they telling the truth in anything they said? All that talk about caring for me all our lives?

No. They weren't. They were lying through their razor-sharp teeth.

All those years when the Chambers scientists stuck me alone with an experiment, said experiment was _not _trying to play innocently with me and express some deep sense of protectiveness. They were trying to attack me, kill me. Kisame had tried to drown me, not play tag with me. And Naruto had tried to punch me, not tickle me.

I mean their lies didn't even make sense! Trying to claw someone's eyes out and calling it playing? I wonder how they fight when it's a male versus a male. I've never seen two of the males stuck together, myself. I wonder how hardcore they get. I've heard tell from scientists, though, that sticking a male with me is much more interesting to watch. So I'm guessing they don't attack so viciously against their fellow men-folk.

Slowly, very slowly, I began scooting away from the Chambers people and their cars, and farther into the woods. I moved as fast as I could without disurbing the forest and making any noise. I had to move before the sight of those hell-reject people got me too scared or angry to move. Many, many steps into the woods later, infuriatingly slow steps between leaf litter and twigs, I took off sprinting. Where was I going again? To someplace, someplace...yes.

Buffalo Jump.

Because I couldn't risk my only friends getting killed, and I couldn't feasibly take them anywhere else on my own.

It was still horrible that I couldn't even go back to say goodbye to them. Neji and Deidara had run off in the direction of Portland, after all, to "search for me" on command of the scientists just five minutes ago. What a coincidence. If I went to search for Shikamaru's house, I could be seen by those two, and they'd probably kill the two cousins straight off, animals that they are.

But wait…I slowed my pace. Zetsu had been the one to threaten me like that. Zetsu alone. Was that just a threat he made up on the spot, by himself, or something he and his buddies had planned the entire time? I had no way of knowing! None! Between two cedar trees I stopped, feeling the frustration and anxiety and fear growing in me, mixing, making me sick. Without thinking, I lashed out my left fist and it swung round and smashed into a tree trunk. Splinters fell and cracks resounded and the wood was wounded. The tree gave a great moan, threatening to fall down.

I had to go. I had to. My only friends would die if I didn't do this.

If I didn't walk right into the darkest, hottest pit of hell ever known. I was going to walk straight up to the eight worst creations of man, and sit down...and practically submit myself to murder. My mind is reaching for pictures of kittens and soft clouds. It's using one of its favorite default deflection techniques, so I don't have to think of my death. Red, tearing, howling, and eyes rolling back, finally tasting my blood, the demonic pleasure they'll have, my last moments saturated to overflowing with the kind of fear most humans haven't the imagination to begin fearing and...And. Nothing.

This time, I didn't even get a running start. I just jumped, where I was, standing, and crashed through a canopy of leaves and branches and maybe a bird. Within a few minutes, I was several hundred feet off the ground, flying with the birds, the free birds that I dreamed to be like.

With this beautiful snow and these free birds flying around me, I'd head straight back to imprisonment, or death. I'd head to Buffalo Jump.

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Well. I hope you enjoyed that. Because my mom came in my room at 2:45 AM and got seriously pissed that I'd stayed up so late on a school night. I finished it the following night, and if she comes up and finds me up so late again, someone's gonna get their throat slit.

I imagine this chapter was confusing (hopefully still satisfying) because of the constantly conflicting opinions of Sakura and the male experiments. It's no spoiler to say that the male experiments are genuine in their feelings. They really always have cared about Sakura, and believed they were all buddies all their lives up until Chapter Two when she began to speak, and revealed that she hated and feared them. And it's going to take a _lot _of convincing before Sakura will begin to believe them.

I know this may have been confusing for you, but all shall be explained in time. Buffalo Jump is a real place in Canada, that you can visit if you wish, and yes, buffalo were driven off the cliff and their dead bodies harvested and made into meat, tools, etc.

Ta…Storm


	10. Tenth

**EDIT, August 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

This chapter was delayed because I was spending a lot of time working on my novel, which at this point has reached its one-hundred-and-ten page point mark. I hope I can keep up with this and not be distracted by the other ideas running around in my head. Many people just aren't motivated to write, but my problem is I want to write too many things! D:

Lastly, I do not own anything related to Naruto or any copyrighted product in this story. Can't believe I missed this disclaimer for ten chapters. I own nothing but video games, books, and a laptop. And thank goodness for those.

Oh, did I say lastly? Fools! THIS is last: some wondrous fanarts have been made for this story by the lovely Vesper chan, and also Thirrin73, both from this very site. Request me the links and I'll gladly give them to you.

Chapter the 10th; tenth anniversary and Christmas celebration!

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Technically, since it's past midnight, it's actually January 13th, and it's 1:01 AM ...Kabuto POV

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This was amazing. This was something I'd never seen in my life before. I sat watching and re-watching the scene that Zetsu's collar-camera had recorded. I'm so glad I came up with that idea and installed that in the collars of Zetsu and Kisame. In two other screens, both the experiments' camera-collars are recording in present-time but what either of them is doing now (wandering in the woods, it seems) is nothing compared to what Zetsu did not too long ago.

"Hey, Kabuto, did you see that?" Genma came into my office and cried out to me. "The recording just finished up in the auditorium. The four of them looked like they had a plan to catch her. And they, they caught her and held her down, and God, you'd think they were talking to her! That's fucking _out-there_, ain't it?"

"Certainly is. I know what happened, though. I'm watching it on my computer. And I was the one who put the camera data in the projector so you guys could watch it there, so I _should_ know."

Genma waved his hands excitedly. "Us down in the auditorium saw every last gigantic detail of the fight! Everyone's screaming about the males now and re-looking over their old tests and everything. Hey, did the Director watch it?"

"Of course he did." I chuckled. I do wonder what he thinks about it..."

Genma came to the other side of my desk. He saw me re-watching the fight on one laptop, the larger one, while the other laptop scrolled downs dozens and dozens of graphs and charts, details from the male experiments last few tests and trials.

"You know the camera is still rolling, don't you?" I told him as I began typing once more.

Genma appeared perplexed, then jumped and gasped, "Then, I have to get down there and watch the rest! Wait, you mean there's more video footage we didn't see? It stopped playing after Sakura pulled away from Zetsu and ran into the trees…no wait, it stopped just after Zetsu ran into the woods after her! Karin and Anko were out there, telling them which directions to search and…ah, this means Karin and Anko still have to watch the footage when they get done searching and come back! They will be _goddamn amazed." _

"They will be surprised, but the recording didn't stop, Genma. It's still going in real-time. Here." I clicked away the recording of The Encounter (it deserves capital letters, I think) and let him see the points of view of Zetsu and Kisame as they lumbered through the woods in the dark. "But right now, we have more important things to be doing than watching where Zetsu's going." I said to him amiably. The amicability was, naturally, fake. Like Karin, I am not fond of Genma and his general stupidity, and harbor suspicions that he cheated his way through the exams of the prestigious university he claims to have graduated from.

"The little circle at the left of the screen will indicate any problems with his collar. If it ever goes black, I'll know his collar is malfunctioning. It so whatever Zetsu is facing, the camera will see. Even now, wherever he is, his camera is recording and watching. If this little light at the bottom of my computer screen ever goes black, I'll know one of the experiments' collars is malfunctioning. Very simple."

"But you won't know if it's Zetsu's or another experiment's that has a problem?" Genma questioned, poking around my office.

Inwardly I cringed at this thoughtless criticism, the product of not having enough time to design the collars. "No, I didn't have enough time to make the mechanism that complex. If it ever goes black, God forbid, we'll have to call them all back here, or perhaps half of them first and the other half later, so some can always be out searching. And they know, from training in their most recent Stealth and Tracking Courses, that getting a shock from their collars means they need to come back here, anyway. But still, it would mean the search would be called off for however long it would take to fix a collar. And we have no time to waste."

"Have you found anything that might have screwed up the sensors on the male experiments' collars, like Sakura's electricity fucked up hers?"

I shook my head. "No. Not that we have a great history of looking for things like that, a Sakura's story can tell you. On the other hand, Sakura's collar was malfunctioning all the time because of a constant flow of electricity inside her. Electricity fries mechanical and computer systems. Kisame's telekinetic control of water, and Itachi's vision, for example are not forces that can cause circuits to fry." Genma raised a hand like a school child who wanted the teacher to call on him. Well, to humor him, I pointed at him to give my permission.

"Thanks, teach. I know it makes sense that only Sakura's got what it takes to mess up the readings on a collar, but really, who's to say Kisame's telekinesis and the abilities of all the other experiments can't do the same? Even years after birthing these creatures, we don't know everything about them. Maybe Naruto's really a genuis, too, and can speak perfect English and cuss us out and knows the Pythagorean Theorem and such."

This thought was horrifying. Terrible. A destroyer of entire worlds. It couldn't be true. "That's nonsense, Genma. We _do _know nearly everything about our experiments. Sakura was a very special case. We were always more sure of the males' intelligence, anyhow. I have no doubt that they are exactly what they seem, and thier thoughts are no more complex that my pet dog's."

I left it at that, and began tapping idly at my smaller laptop. I scrolled down on a month-old _Number 4, 145 Degree Iron Resistance Trial Sheet_. Which told, in Genma's elementary terms, how many times Zetsu was hit with a bunch of red-hot iron sticks of varying temperatures before he was seriously injured. On the fourth hit, Zetsu caved. He yelled to high heaven, and closed his plant-limb over his head, collapsing into shivers and fright. Zetsu had always been one of the more sensitive creations. On the seventh hit, his hand caught fire—the creature is half plant, you know—and was put out immediately.

Apparently disliking the new silence, Genma piped up with, "You know, Kisame almost died when Sakura ran into him and the power box fell on them."

He must not be aware that I was the one that performed open-heart surgery on him to cauterize the wounds that the electricity had managed to open there. I sent him a look of false sympathy, but also with genuine intrigue. He spent some time with all the experiments, caring for their physical and medicinal needs, but he'd never shown any special attachment to Kisame.

"In my opinion, he needed a little more training, more specialized training that would work around his injuries, before he was released with the others." Genma continued. "If I had my way, he'd be kept back for another several days to heal up, and get used to stress again that could hurt his heart or spine."

How cute. He wanted to give Kisame a handicap since he'd been hurt. "Well, Kisame was never an individual to be kept down by most anything. When we let him go out with the others to look for Sakura, we considered his health along with his endurance. If you're so concerned about him getting hurt, then be aware that he was back to normal in less than a day after the surgery. Not three hours into the new training."

"Yeah, well..." Genma started, and did not elaborate. He started a new thread, or rather picked up an old one. "I suggest getting someone to run over old tests and make sure no experiment's ability impeded on the test results. Just wanna make sure the others aren't taking after Sakura and planning escape, too. God, that'd suck, huh?"

It would indeed. But I could not share this fear with Genma, or even the Director. _  
_

"They certainly acted like hunting dogs just now, didn't they?" I said, gesturing to the still replaying screen of The Encounter. "As you said, it seemed like they were talking to each other. Neji pinned Sakura down, and I suspected he would give her a blow to knock her unconscious, or cause her pain. But he waited until the other three came over, and they sat around her and seemed to…talk about something."

"Is there a way to find out what they were saying to each other?"

"Not unless I can invent a way to talk to animals and translate growling."

"It was something Sakura sure as hell didn't enjoy." Genma observed. On my larger laptop, we watched The Encounter on mute. At the present angle, Zetsu was only a foot or so above the ground, the rest of him submerged with the earth. With so little distance between Sakura and himself, her facial expressions were clear.

Neji had just pinned Sakura to the ground; it was the beginning of the, shall I say, Very Interesting Scene. I could hear a voice that I was sure was Neji's, calmly and contentedly growling something while Sakura lay stone-still with eyes that looked like they'd seen a ghost. That was the hypothesis, anyhow. Sakura's mouth moved slowly, and she did not speak. At least, not in English, like she had when she escaped days ago and cussed us all out. Just about ten seconds before in the video, Sakura had said, in perfect English, "If I'm going to die now, I want to die with some scrap of dignity!"

But then Neji had said something in his purring tongue, and out of nowhere, Sakura was now longer speaking English. Her mouth and tongue moved slightly, but her voice wasn't made of words anymore. It was a somewhat feminine growling-purring sound, soft and quiet, likely with disbelief. If I had my eyes closed, I would have believed I was listening to some kind of wildcat kitten. And if her expression was anything to go by, she didn't even know that she was doing it. But _what _were they all saying? I'd give anything to know what Sakura's expressions here are all about.

At some point, Genma walked back over to the door and said, "See ya soon, Kabuto. I'll be in the first floor Chemicals Lab. Well, I guess as security manager, you'll see me on your monitors, won't you? _Ciao_."

And with a self-amused chuckle, Genma opened and closed the door and left. I sneered at the closed door. There'd have to be a hell of a crisis at this facility before I spent time actively hunting my monitors for Genma.

Back to the video. I skipped a little of it and watched the section where Deidara moved his finger up and down on Sakura's neck. She appeared too preoccupied with another male's growl-talk to notice to gesture. _'How dare that brainless parrot…touching something so valuable like _that!_' _I skipped more content of the video, coming towards the end, where a few white specks dotted the edge of the camera. It was snowing. I skipped some more, to a point where Sakura was standing up and moving about again. She and Zetsu's hands were laced together and they were struggling to push each other down. They spoke to each other, Zetsu in his schizophrenic tones—one that sounded definitely evil and one not _quite _so evil—and Sakura snarling back. I had a suspicion that he was threatening her, threatening something terrible.

The experiments have always had bloodlust for Sakura. Even when they're in an innocently playful mood, they'd tried to attack her. Every chance they were given, they made a beeline right for our fine little bird, claws and fangs and all weapons available at the ready. They desired her death, and delighted in the hunt for it.

Or so I'd thought.

Seeing this recording once, just once, gave me the idea that somehow the near-decade we'd spent watching Sakura run away from the male experiments, all the data we'd collected from seeing it happen, was wrong.

After watching this, I even more worried and confused. Deidara's little gesture, that looked rather like petting a cat to me, and Kakashi's soft expressions and the way he regarded her, all suggested some sort of...affection. Or lust. Kakashi had leaned down and whispered close to her ear. Zetsu's normally coarse growling voice had gone somewhat softer for portions of the conversation. And the suggestive position in which Neji held her down in needed no words, except perhaps "where did he learn that?"

And their facial expressions, too. So soft. Not mindlessly gleeful enough. Not joyous that they would get a quick chance to beat her half to death before bringing her back here. I'd expected that, actually: despite the training they'd been given which specified that she be no more hurt than was required to subdue her, Sakura would be brought back bleeding and broken. But no. There was no beating, but a bit of _petting? _What was going on with them?

God, if only I could somehow translate the males' language! I had tried numerous times in the past years, and all attempts came out as failures, or spending their lives as glorified boomboxes. But, oh, to understand just this single conversation, it would yield so many answers! Why they acted the way they did towards her, what Kakashi had secretly whispered to her, what Zetsu had threatened her with...

And what made it even worse was that no one but me, according to Genma, had noticed any of this! The only thing people seemed to be screaming about was the fact that the male experiments were smart enough to create a plan to do this at all. This would show that they're nearly three times as intelligent as we first pegged them. Brain of a hunting dog, my ass. What fucking idiots.

But unlike the idiotic staff, I'd dig deeper and deeper until I hit the center of the earth. I would have to try to create another machine that could translate animal sounds to English. I had tried to make such a machine a dozen times before, and all had failed. Nothing wrong with trying again, right? Right.

'_What else do I have to do?' _I thought to myself. _'What am I going to need to do now…?' _Well, number one, I had an obligation to study Zetsu some more. Of my attemps to create a translating machine, my two closest ones were the two that I modeled after the body of Zetsu.

It's a tediously complex thing to explain circuits or the circulatory system, or how the two are similar, so I'll skip that part. Only let it be known that Zetsu, with the camera on his new collar, might help me gain more research results. Zetsu is a creature of two minds. His black half is more aggressive, and his white is...not quite so bad. But this difference goes beneath the surface. The halves breathe at different times and even pump their half of the heart on two separate schedules. I've always had a theory that by studying his independent body halves I could model a translating machine the same way: sifting through English at one end and Animal at the other, not in sync at all, but still in harmony with each other, their differences obvious but not harmful at all. So we think.

Twelve years we've had Zetsu, and we still don't know.

Once more I skipped a portion of the video to re-watch certain scenes. I needed to listen to Zetsu's tones, watch his actions more thoroughly than before. The strange thing that interested me was the last forty seconds or so of the video. It appeared that most people who watched it, all the staff in fact, dismissed Zetsu's last action as an accident.

To the average eye, it looked as though Sakura pulled away from Zetsu and zipped backward into the forest with a massive ruffle of leaves, branches and brush that made me think of a terrified escapee juggernauting thier way fearfully into the woods. And it also seemed that Zetsu was waiting for a command to go after her, which Karin and Anko came in and gave him about fifteen seconds later.

But...this may not be so.

I had watched the footage again and again, looking at the smallest details that my fellow employees are too excited and riled up to notice. It looked to me that Zetsu _pushed _Sakura into the trees, even pushed her in the manner that disturbed and ruffled the leaves and bushes to make it look like she was running away and pushing branches out of her way in a desperate attempt to escape, when actually none of that was true. It looked to me like…like Zetsu had _let her get away._

Why? Why would he do that? So he could experience the thrill of the chase again when he caught up with her? What was his motive? Even if the experiments were no smarter than hunting dogs, I had no doubt in my mind that they, too, had a motive. Perhaps it was the same as ours and they were simply _that_ loyal, being, well, hunting dogs. But I could not know. I didn't know their language, and, as recent events have proven, I don't know the minds of my creations as well as I used to think.

But I would keep all of this to myself. If my new translator somehow did work, I could hear the experiments talking, via Zetsu or Kisame's hidden collar-camera, and I could at last know what their plans were—because, apparently, they were smart enough to make those. Then I'd make a move by myself, without the Director or Karin or anyone else.

I would take control of the experiments. I would take control of Chambers. All of it.

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January 13th, 3:00-in-the-morning-ish? Well, it's very late at night, so, whatever. ...Sakura POV

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If the situation weren't like this, I'd be happy to be flying like I was now. I was up in the air, alone, free, in the cold wind, concealing clouds, and the quiet, falling snow. I would have done a hundred mid-air loops for the joy of it, because this was almost exactly how I pictured my freedom to look like. This was exactly what I'd dreamed about. Peace. Privacy. Space to romp around. My own personal limbo.

Except for that one little detail that I was flying towards what was more than likely my doom. And that, more or less (no, wait, more) destroyed the perfect scene.

Let's not forget that I don't know where Buffalo Jump is. "It's in Canada" is of no help at all. Did Zetsu expect me to mosey on up to some Canadian person and ask where it is? And if I didn't know where it was, how in the world did Zetsu know? Since when did he have time to study the topography and tourist destinations of Canada?

I stifled a yelp as a white-feathered bird zipped past my face, screeching. I smiled as it's little form disappeared into the dark, snowy clouds.

_That's gonna be me one day._

That optimistic thought had come out of nowhere, and it disappeared without my being able to grasp and dissect it. Now that I thought about it, for the last few hours, I'd thought about nothing but doom and death and Buffalo Jump and getting my bones broken by the males. (I have the goddamn _right, _okay?) Freedom and fighting and all that had kind of…gone away. Except for when I think about how I don't have those things now. I feel chained. I have a leash pulling me towards this meeting place of theirs. And once upon a time, I had _decked _one of these suckers and slammed him into a tree. That memory was awesome. Suddenly my leash felt looser.

That first punch, that time Neji had been tossed away and made skid marks in the dirt, was one of the shining moments of my life. So much hope and adrenaline was built up in me after that, so much confidence, power, success. Deidara's new eye device is proof of my work. I had injured him that day. My electricity was powerful enough to wound them. Perhaps...if I aimed a strike at the heart, or at the brain, it could also kill?

Well, hell, I burned up an entire forest clearing with one strike when I was trying to hit Kakashi. Something that can burn trees and grass to ash could surely kill a half-human animal! As more snow fell around me in my safe cloud haven, my adrenaline began slightly…pumping.

Maybe I could…make that work this time. When I'd escaped, I'd had them all attacking me, and I had come out pretty much all right. I could do it again. With the right combination of determination, caution, and good old violence, I could fight them all off, leave some broken bones to remember me by, perhaps shock their brains into a convenient and permanent vegetative state, and then take off flying to somewhere else. Alaska, maybe? Or the east coast, a very populated area where they'd never guess I'd go to? Maybe Europe! Maybe I'd live in France and wear striped shirts and call "Oh ho ho~" to the unsuspecting tourists. Except I had friends I had to care for who couldn't realistically just fly to France with me whenever I wanted. Who needed my protection._  
_

That's right. That's right! I unconsciously began flapping harder, pumping up higher in he clouds. This was for my friends. My two precious friends. For them, I had flown straight down to half the experiments with a war cry, because they were that important. For them. For them only. It was only because of them that I was now thinking of using my electric ability to strike a fatal blow. I had mastered control of it by now, and understood the mental commands that would bring that energy to life, running down my arms and then centering and growing inside my hands.

I clenched my fists and tried to fight a smile. With my usual thinking, something that could sometimes make hours pass like minutes, I had gotten some of my spirit back. _'Fight. Fight like you always have.' _I told myself. _'Keep to the sky, hit hard with electricity. Find Buffalo Jump.' _Oh. I still had to find out where Buffalo Jump was.

You know what? I still had to find out if I was still in America. I had to find out if I had crossed the Canadian border!

I guess now was as good a time as any. None of the experiments could possibly run as fast as I can fly, so they wouldn't be anywhere near wherever I was going to land. And the scientists had no idea where I was. They wouldn't be searching as far as Canada for me, would they? Actually, it would make sense if they would. They know I realistically _could _fly as far as...well, France. Or farther.

I had just left Portland…which was in Oregon…which is the very top-left state, according to my mental map. It only made sense that they would search across the border, too, so near as it was. And Chambers was a worldwide company, with the most advanced technology in the world at the palms of their hands. I didn't have to tell myself twice that they were going to use that evil technology to try to take me back. Oh, did I mention a worldwide company has worldwide members? As in, people all around the world looking for me?

If the ones from my American lab sent their hellhounds after me, who's the say they haven't spread the word of my escape, so that a lab in nearby Canada would be watching for me, too?

For all I know there are Chambers people, in China and Iceland and South Africa who know about me escaping. They could be preparing ridiculously remote places like the island of fucking _Midway_ for all I know! I had to be more careful than I thought. Maybe I should go up a little higher just to be safe.

Wait, what was I thinking before this? I have problems with taking a five-second thought and turning it into a five-hour discussion and presentation with myself. Unfortunately I find this a fascinating way to pass time when stuck in a dog crate and bleeding carelessly out of various orifices, and the habit's stuck, even when I'm actually supposed to be doing something. Know what? Whatever. If I do too much thinking there's a chance I'll fly past Buffalo Jump altogether. And like hell I'm flying back in the direction I came from, _towards _the most sickening birthplace on earth. I'll just land and get myself orientated. Find my location. Find out the location of Buffalo Jump. Somehow.

I had to land now, before my brain took off again, before the other experiments got too near. Now. For Kakuzu and Hidan. I was feeling pretty chipper when a pointed dart whizzed past my right wingtip, and I blinked in silent surprise, realizing that in my little brainstorm I'd slowly drifted lower and lower in the sky. Low enough to be seen by a person with exceptional eyesight.

I watched as as a silver feather of mine was wind-blown down toward the ground, down towards two men and their green car, standing in the woods, apparently in the middle of nowhere.

Hmm…idea!

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January 13th, my fine friends! 3:55 in the morning and my father's just shot the biggest bald eagle on the continent! ...Rock Lee POV

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"Haha! Lee, come quick with the tranquilizer darts! I'll need more cc's than this to take down this baby! I've never _seen _an eagle so big! We'll get props for this one, oh, _yeah!_"

My father and I were standing just outside of our jeep that cold January night, which was loaded with all kinds of equipment from hiking boots to tranquilizer drugs to snake anti-venom to spreading-nets. My father had just spotted a tiny speck of a bird—a jumbo-size, he joked, that dashingly funny man!—and aimed a tranquilizer gun at it with his extraordinary aim. He shot it with Rompun, a very safe animal tranquilizer that he hoped would calm the animal, so that when it landed we could take it to a safe facility and tag it.

My father was a lover of wildlife, and I, his son, am delighted to be his perfect copy! I'm Rock Lee, only son of Maito Guy, a dedicated wildlife conservationist. Once I am out of high school, I, too, shall join him in his never-ending quest to love and help Mother Nature. And here we were on another of our missions, tagging wild birds, for their own safety, mind you, and setting them free in protected area. We were tucked in the forested, mountainous edge of British Columbia, a most delightful province of Canada, and by George, there's a lot of wildlife in this particular spot!

"How many cc's, father? And of which drug?" I set down my half-eaten bag of Cheetos and asked him with a salute. "Shall I use Rompun, the safest tranquilizer we have? That's what you just shot with now, wasn't it? The eagle may fall out of the sky if we give him enough cc's! And we can catch him safely in this spreading-net that Tenten gave us—"

"No, son, unfortunately, it hurts me to say, we can't just let this big fellow have Rompun." My father said boldly, putting down his rifle and holding out the tranquilizing gun to the heavens. "Lee, it's my job as an officer of the Manitoba Forestry Association to capture these eagles, tag them, and return them safely to the wild! This eagle is sure to be sought by hunters, so he must be tagged by our biggest and baddest weapon, my son, quick as lightning, hurry up, now!" Of course Manitoba province was quite far away, but my father did all he could for the wildlife everywhere in the world. He would tag this eagle for its own safety, if it was the last thing he ever did! And I, as his son, must help and support him and this gorgeous eagl—huh?

Hmm. A silver feather has fallen from the sky and landed on my nose. Peculiar! I'm quite sure bald eagles aren't silver-colored. "Father! Look here, quick!"

My father did so, and stared at the feather in my hand. "Well, my God! I could have sworn that was a bald eagle! But with primary feathers so large…grey feathers…Must be an overgrown gyrfalcon!"

"But don't they usually stay farther up north of Canada? Or even the Arctic?" I queried. From my father, I knew much about wildlife. (And self-defense, if I do say so myself!) "Well, while you find me some darts, Lee, think about the biggest types of birds you know—with grey feathers! This question is worth fifteen points!"

It may seem strange to everyone, especially my friend Tenten, but my father and I have a "points system." He will assign points of various tasks and questions he gives me. I can transfer in my points for special prizes, such as the privilege to rent a movie, invite a friend to our home, or even or even help him teach his tae-kwon-do class! Even now, I was forty points away from being able to join him for his next class!

"I believe the secretary bird is large and grey, father!" I said enthusiastically, searching the dart box for the strongest tranquilizer.

"True, son! I'll give you the points, even though the secretary bird is native only to _Africa, _and I rather doubt that that's what we've got right here. Now, where's that tranquilizer?" I searched faster and faster, picking up little bottles and reading the small, fine print on each one as frantically and efficiently as I could. "Forgive me, I've forgotten the name of the strongest one!"

"Not a problem, Lee!" My father said buoyantly, still pointing his gun at the large speck of a bird in the sky. "It's the Charge 350, you know, that wondrously bright-blue bottle from the Chambers store. Now, Lee, a standard elephant needs almost two hundred cc's of Charge 350 to be put to sleep, and they weigh about five thousand pounds. The average gyrfalcon is, hmm…about three and a half pounds, perhaps four. This baby must we twice that size, seven pounds, I'd say! How many cc's do you think we need? Five points!"

I wasn't usually quick as math, but if it involves my dearest animals, I could always do it! Using my best mental calculator, I came up with several answers, and I couldn't choose one, for fear that this eagle being unusually large might mess up the math problem. I said after a long pause, "I think about five and a half cc's…or twenty-eight…or two and eight-tenths of a cc, or—"

"We'll go with fifteen, then! Good enough! No points will be awarded or taken away this time." I quickly stuck a needle into the bottom of the Charge 350 bottle, and watched as the needle's chamber filled with blue liquid. "There!" Just as I said it, my father thanked me and stuck the needle into the gun's barrel. "This is for your own good, eagle!"

BAM! The needle blasted away into the sky, straight towards the dark speck that was the gyrfalcon—or whatever bird it was. I saw the shape tilt slightly, as though the impact of the dart had surprised it or shoved it back a little. "Prepare another needle, Lee! We'll try twenty-eight cc's this time. It doesn't look like it's been affected. Strange, since Charge is supposed to have effect right on contact—GYOHH!"

FWINGGG

The needle had flown down back towards us, double the speed, and glanced off my father's tranquilizer gun before burying itself deep into the metal hide of our jeep's passenger door. My father and I stared at that needle for a few moments before we turned our heads up to the sky and saw the great bird had begun circling us, and if I'm not mistaken, had come a little lower in the sky.

"Father. I do believe the bird just attempted to give the needle back."

He stared up at the feathered animal while it continued to circle us. After about a half dozen circles or so, I realized that, yes, not only was the bird circling us, it was coming closer to us. It seemed as though the bird was clever enough to inspect us! It may think we're a few clever mice and it may want to hunt us! Good! I'll get a good look at the beautiful thing. "Another needle, father?" I asked slowly, trying to hide my excitement.

Even though he said nothing, I began filling another syringe, preparing it for my father to stick inside the gun's barrel. "Father, here you are. I put twenty-eight cc's in it this time…er, Father?" My father was staring up at the circling bird, and I looked too, then realized it was _much _bigger than we thought at first glance. _Much _bigger than a gyrfalcon.

'_It's…it's huge! That wingspan has to be ten feet!' _I thought, almost dropping the needle. It was only our great vision that told us this; the bird was still very high up, and a person with average eyes would only be able to tell it was grey, and somewhat large. Our eyes, though, told us "grey and absolutely monstrous."

"Lee…" My father whispered. "Find another needle and put a hundred cc's in it. Then get the net ready." I stuttered and gasped. "W-what? But...half an elephant's dose? Are you sure?"

He nodded and kept his eyes up on the bird. Years of life under this man's tutelage and love told me to trust him and do as he said. I began feeling around in the case for a larger needle. I found one. He stuck it into the gun when I gave it to him, slowly and not-provokingly as possible, while I moved the spreading-net into my arms. It was a product of the loyal and wonderful Chambers Inc, a special device for fowl hunters that even the Bass Pro Shop down the road didn't carry.

It was a small, soft square, not much bigger than a small dog, perhaps. If I held down a small button on the end for three seconds, two dozen soft, pillow-like structures would inflate across an amazing twenty-five-foot-wide surface. I could throw it onto the ground, and a bird falling from seven hundred feet in the air could land on the spreading-net safe and comfortable, could land as buoyantly as a child on a moonbounce, I daresay!

There is also the useful fact that when something lands on the net, a hundred nylon fibers jump out of edges of the massive square, triggered by motion and impact, and snare the thing that landed? So you see, the spreading-net is an excellent tool not only for catching downed birds, but snaring them!

"I'm ready to open the net any minute." I told him. "Are you ready, father?" He nodded, and I could barely catch that confident gleam of his teeth that told me he was ready to jump the River Styx if he had to. He grinned up at the bird, which was getting bigger by the minute. It was a very…very long bird, indeed. Unusually long and very straight tail feathers, and it's head was—what?

I dropped the net. "Father." I gaped. "That bird's head is pink."

His teeth gleam had disappeared, and he was frowning. The gun seemed to have gone a little slack in his hands. "Don't let the wind mess around with your eyes, Lee. Pick up that net, now." His tone was flat. Sort of similar to mine, actually.

Then the bird suddenly folded its wings inward and it dove toward us. My father let it get close enough for us to see. Its incredible diving speed blurred its exact shape from my eyes, but I could tell it was nearly as big as me, minus its wings. Standing up, that bird must be five feet tall! It must be a record! It must! Then I heard the awaited BAM as my father shot the dart up at the eagle. I held the button on the capture net, preparing to throw it any second now for the bird to land on.

There was a grunting sound that was suspiciously like "Ow!" and the eagle's speed slowed from the tranquilizer dart's impact. Its head _was _pink, and there was enough of it to be a whole mane, no, a head of a person's hair. But still, even through the dart shot, which should have made it drop straight out of the sky, the bird was diving. And didn't stop until it came at us.

I tossed the capture net out and away, and in the span of perhaps three seconds, it had inflated to ten times its size, a gigantic red pillow. Out of nowhere, I saw a bright yet thin flash of something blue, and my father yelled out in pain and tossed the gun onto the net in surprise. No sooner had that happened, the bird came down with all it had. Its wingspan was even bigger than I'd thought, more than ten feet for sure. It landed on the top of our jeep for a split second, rocking it, and then bounced off. It used its—suspiciously hand-like—feet to shove my father onto the spreading-net.

Uncountable, finger-thick fibers jumped out from the edges of the spreading-net and leaped to opposite sides, creating a true net on the surface. My father was pinned and stuck underneath the many green, powerful strings, and he wasn't moving, either.

It came for me next. I raised a fist and couldn't help but instinctively throw out a punch to the place where I assumed the collarbone would be, but it dodged. The speed of its movement was so great that for a moment I was scared, and then in the next moment, it had kicked me onto the giant net. For a few moments I was flying in the air over to the big red pillow of the capture net, crying out in pain of the bird's harsh strike. I landed and bounced on the huge surface before more of the net fibers jumped out and flew over me. They hooked onto the other side of the net over and over again until I, too, was caught under countless green strings.

I looked through a gap, panting and holding my shoulder in pain of the bird's kick. Through that, I swear to God himself, that I saw one of his angels. It looked like a girl who had dyed her hair pink. Her wings were large and silver, and with my wonderful judgment of animals, I'm guessing her wingspan was, eh, eleven feet. Proportionately, they were barely big enough to let her fly. She was impossible. Yet she was abiding to a scientific proportion.

And she was standing, her back facing me, looking at the items in our jeep. I could hear her hands moving the various bags and boxes around, and she was making curious, almost childish sounds as she did so. The tee and shorts she wore did no justice to my previous "angel" thought. Eventually she went up to the front of the car, moved other things around, then stopped. I tried to move under the tight fibers, and could barely see through them. Now, she was holding…my bag of Cheetos?

CRNCH-MM-CCRCCHH

What? _'Is…' _I struggled to hook together two very unlike thoughts. _'Is that angel eating my Cheetos?'_

Apparently…she was. That bag of Cheetos was my midnight snack, and the only other food we had with us was two bags of trail mix that had been sealed in a bear-proof jar. If she'd tried to open the jar without typing in something on its special keypad, it would have beeped three times and sprayed a slightly noxious gas that would send any bear in the woods running and screaming with disgust at the smell. I'm quite sure I would have noticed that, so she must have had my Cheetos right now.

No-oooo-ooo! Not my Cheetos! Those cost me forty-four points and almost two weeks of strenuous training! I mustn't lose such a valuable prize. It would do dishonors to both my stomach and my father. I had to voice this thought or…or…nameless horrors would come about! Prepare to face my righteous wrath, angel!

"O nameless, lovely creature of heaven!" (What a clergy I could make!) "I implore thee, please leave my snack foods be!"

The crunching stopped. The fibers were so strong and heavy that I nearly couldn't sit up underneath them, but with my great endurance my father gave me, I held strong and still. I tried to find another gap to see through. Was she looking at me? Or had she used some telekinetic, heavenly power to disappear without warning?

It took a few seconds, but I managed to move my body around to a tiny slot between thick fibers and see most of the angel's body, and our jeep and the dark woods behind her. I _would _have seen her face, too, if her darned wing could just move to the side a smidge! But then again, it _is _almost four in the morning, so I'm not sure if my vision would be good enough to see more than her brightly-colored hair. Either way, I couldn't see the girl's face. Darn, I say!

"I...I would very much like to eat those myself, miss!" I went on, but then suddenly another worry came over me—the worry that perhaps this angel-girl would steal my father's hunting equipment. Imagine the points I would lose! But then I felt silly for it, as no angel in their right mind would commit such a sin as stealing…but then again, surely this angel did just commit some sort of smallish sin by knock out my father and snaring us down on our own trap, the spreading-net. And she threw our needle at us, which had come dangerously close to striking my father. So perhaps I should worry.

There were more rustlings and banging around, so she must have ignored me and continued to go through our possessions. I heard her say, "Sorry, sir," in an apologetic voice, and then out of nowhere her wings seemed to explode into my vision as she spread them and prepared to fly away.

She turned around, and if she hadn't been so fast I would have glimpsed her face. But then she'd gotten a running start, jumped up and taken off. Within seconds, through the spreading-net fibers I was watching her fly away into the sky again.

I stared up at the sky, for a few minutes oblivious to everything but a few confused thoughts. Eventually, my father stirred and found that the combination of his size, weight and exhaustion kept him from moving underneath the huge fibers of the capture net. I dimly heard him trying to adjust his position, turn his body toward me with great effort. These fibers were _tight, _you know. Tight enough to hold down my father, the great Gai!

"Ohh…what…Lee? Lee, are you allright? Were you able to shoot the bird?" His voice was tired. Nearly too tired to be the always-enthusiastic character my father always was. The winged girl must have kicked him in his brain. His brain is surely hurt in some way, shape or form to not remind him that he must perform all actions with zest!

"No, she was too fast." I replied, still staring upwards. "She kicked me on the net right after she kicked you, and I heard her rustling around in our jeep. She flew away."

My father accepted my explanation, I suppose, but then, a few moments and a few more struggles to move around later, he chuckled, "Ah, so you were skillful enough to see that it was a female?"

"But of course, father! I am you son, after all! I take after all your analyzing abilities!" I cried with the enthusiasm I'd been hoping would return to us. I used this cheerful enthusiasm to distract me from the lie I was about to tell. "Unfortunately, I wasn't even able to guess what species she was. I can still only guess she's an overgrown gyrfalcon. She took off and flew northeast…more east than north, actually."

It hurt to lie to my father. It hurt so deep inside, in every part of myself that I thought I would burst from this lie and tell my father that I'd encountered a Cheeto-stealing angel. But then if I did, it would become his main project to capture this angel and protect it from hunters and the horrible people of this world who wouldn't hesitate to shoot her. Are angels bulletproof? What if a simple shotgun blast could kill her? Would my father be damned to eternal hell for attempting to tranquilize what he believes is a vulnerable creature for its safety?

My father would trail this creature if he knew what I'd really seen and possibly even forget about donating three thousand dollars to help support the Indian Tigers Welfare Society. Surely she didn't need two swashbuckling forest boys like us hanging around her when she was likely doing some godly mission to benefit Heaven and the Lord.

It would simply be best if I didn't tell my father about this, and that I try to discourage him from continuing the job of trailing her, however much it _hurt. _

"Well, then, we'll have to wait…" he murmured, giving up his attempts to sit up under the tight strings. "This net is programmed to undo its fibers after four minutes have passed since the first fiber came out. Then it will be time to drive home and—" Even as he spoke, we could hear the fibers and the locks that made them so tight and powerful clicking and undoing themselves. The fibers retracted back into the pillow-like surface, and the pillow-like surface itself began deflating. I could feel myself getting closer and closer to the ground.

"Father, are you hurt? I will drive home, if you'd like me to." He shook his head and we crawled off the net together. The net by now was more like a gigantic, deflating air mattress, and we began folding it up. "No, no." He said over and over again. "Ten points for offering, though, son. It's a weekend, so we may have some extra sleep. I'll allow you till 1:30 in the afternoon—that's about nine hours and then it will be time for our Tae Kwon Do lessons at 2:00."

I nodded the whole way through his instructions, folding up the pillow and helping him load up our guns and bottles and cases of tranquilizer liquids. We didn't exactly bother to look at our equipment or see how the angel had messed around with it, so exhausted we'd suddenly become.

Our home was a comfortable one-story house on the outer edge of Abbotsford, and the drive onto the highway, away from the forest and mountains, and back near town would take a bit more than a half hour. (My, my, we didn't go very far this night, did we? Usually on our weekend wildlife trips we go dozens and dozens more miles away than this!)

"Oh, Lee, that bird's flown off with one of our maps! It's ever smarter than I thought it was! Smarter than when it threw my dart back at me, even." Suddenly he burst out laughing and slapped the steering wheel, and the jeep moved shakily on the road. "Lee, that bird's a clever one! Look, it's, it's…it's taken your Cheetos!"

666

Lee's flowery speech makes me lawl.

End for now. This chapter ended up being a grand total of forty-three pages long, and here we've stopped at page eighteen. Will this be a two-for-one or a three-for-one chapter? I'll know in a few minutes when I post it and so will you.

Merry Christmas, all. May the spirit of Santa and his reindeer and elves and this gift of an Airborne chapter and this funny central-set end note fill you with joy.

Ta and Happy Holidays…Storm


	11. Eleventh

**EDIT, August 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a new, successful college student an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

Second piece of a three-for-one chapter, also the shortest. Merry Christmas, this is my gift to you all. (Since I can't exactly give anything else.)

Chapter the Eleventh.

666

January 13th. It must be 5:00 in the morning by now. It's very cold. ...Sasori POV

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This weather is despicable. Snow. This is the ugliest, most unfortunate curse on the Earth.

It's been snowing for hours now, and Naruto has done nothing but bounce around in it, waiting for the others to return. He thinks it's fun to catch this frozen menace on his tongue, swallow it, and make little snowballs and throw them at trees. He's playing. There is something within him that lets him ignore how ungodly cold it is, and I wish I had it, too.

Earlier in the night, Kakashi found me and told me to watch over Naruto while he went to fetch a few others. He had a plan, he said. Kakashi is our eldest and perhaps our wisest. Unless he asks me for my opinion, my strategy, I must stay and do as he commands me. And he hadn't commanded me to go looking for Sakura just yet, so I would snarl and quietly hate him and stay where I was. I noticed her scent had become slightly stronger. It was a string of wildflowers on the breeze instead of the broken, weak chord of scent it had been before. It meant she had come a little nearer, and I still could not go to her. And now my hate for Kakashi was not so quiet.

Naruto heard me growling and kept away from me, respectfully and knowing exactly what I was thinking of. It crossed my mind that, certainly, he was having my same thoughts, and was hiding them. This idea surprised me (Naruto cannot usually hide anything) but I accepted it so I could go back to thinking of Sakura, and Kakashi, and how my fingers and face ached in this weather.

Surely Kakashi's plan had something beneficial to it. He wouldn't have me sit here for nothing, have me wait while Sakura is so near. So I sat and watched Naruto and seethed. It was so fucking cold.

The scientists knew my body was not made for the cold weather. I am a scorpion, a desert animal. My keeping cell in the Chambers building had constant light and heating. I would lie and sun myself when the scientists were not prodding me. Sometimes they would come in and prod me even as I lay under the light and heat. When I was younger I could even sleep through it, but certainly not the first time it happened. The first time it happened, they jabbed a needle into my liver and this woke me up. They left the needle there and I cried at the pain. Deidara knows that.

But I digress. The point of such musings is, I am not supposed to be out in such freezing weather, even with the layer of underclothes I was given to wear tight against my skin, to keep body heat within. These they gave me, as well as a container of pills which are said to adjust my body temperature, in some way I don't understand. the scientists commanded me to swallow one each day, and I know better than to assume they will say anything that doesn't benefit my health. But both these measures can only help so much. I don't belong in this weather and only for Sakura would I ever sit out in it, waiting to be called on like a hound. Only for her would I allow my tail to freeze and shiver. Naruto turned around many times to tell me my shivering tail was distracting him.

"It's hurting my peripheral vision, Sasori!" He said for the third time. "You should sit on it or something, stop it from moving and keep it warm before it falls off." This I did, and seethed even more because it was such an obvious thing that I burned with the same of having to have Naruto tell it to me.

I had never been keen on waiting. I had never been keen on cold. Naruto's occasional whiny spurts, were something else I wasn't keen on. Naruto himself, though, I was. He was my little brother. Everyone's little brother. He's also the main entertainer—and during these "spurts" as Kabuto called them, needed constant watch or he would destroy something in his play. Twice in his life he's been in a room with the scientists and has knocked them all unconscious (tore two fingers off of one of them) and when he was found, both times he was sniffing mischievously around racks of highly dangerous chemicals.

It was a syringe full of my own venom that knocked him out both times so that he could be taken back to his cell. My venom, stolen from me, a substance which I could make lethal or completely innocuous, like any scorpion, or a sedative or rabies-inducing, and many other things besides. Many goats, chimps and lab rats had been subject to tests on resistance to my venom. Most of them foamed at the mouth, I think.

Thinking this makes me observe Naruto again. His antics are irritating me, but I would never inject any lethal venom into him. He is our little brother. We guide him and play with him, and when he misbehaves, we beat him. He learns through both ways.

Naruto had stopped moving, and this attracted my attention. I looked up and saw him very still, with his blonde fox ears twitching at their ends. He crouched on the ground, and I stood. Naruto's ears were perfect. And I could guess what he was hearing. . _'Finally.' _

It was another silent and snowy fifteen seconds before I began to scent Kakashi and Zetsu, walking together. Soon enough, Zetsu came into view. His plant-limb made strange, pointed shadows on the trees he walked past, a phenomenon I had never seen before. Kakashi lifted his head to acknowledge us, and instead of smelling like bark, like the wood of a healthy tree, he had the scent of snow, _Sakura _and…fire?

"What the hell took so long?" Naruto leaped in front of Zetsu. "You've been with here? You made us wait here for two hours so you could go play with her? And Deidara, you…Deidara's not with you?" Naruto jumped back in surprise as though Zetsu had suddenly turned to acid, I nearly had the same reaction. There had always been an annoying, nagging fear among us that when near Sakura, Deidara would open up his wings and fly after her, where we couldn't chase her with him. Deidara would not fly, so this fear was ungrounded, but we all of us would surely resent the first male to touch Sakura.

"Deidara can't fly, Naruto. You know that." I calmed him, and in doing so, hid my own anxiety from the same fear. _'Deidara cannot have her first. She must be shared.' _This was something we'd decided a long time ago.

"Then, where is he? And Neji! You said you would bring Deidara _and Neji_ back with you!" My eyes went wide and the cold suddenly seemed to matter a lot less. I stood up and nervously curled and uncurled my tail, and walked over to Naruto. I looked Kakashi seriously in the eye while Naruto ranted on, "What happened? Did she attack Neji? Tell us!"

Zetsu's plant-limb shivered in the cold (he is no better off than I in this weather; and in fact must take the same temperature pills) He rubbed one particularly cold and pale side of his plant-limb to get his blood flowing, and the white side of his mouth moved, "Idiot. Don't you remember? A meeting was arranged. We have time to collect everyone else and fix the collar problem before we go."

Like hell I would admit that I'd forgotten about it, too. Zetsu, Kakashi, Neji and Deidara had all fought each other in a four-way fight just before being released to hunt Sakura. It was a final test of the lessons we'd all learned in preparation for tracking her. _Why _did they decide to force those four to fight each other, and make no similar fight between the remaining four of us, is beyond me. Chambers Incorporated and the rats that live in its clotted veins have their own plans and I do not care to think about them unless necessary.

But this matters not. During this rare four-way battle, under the guise of shouting battle cries and shrieks of pain at their wounds, the four of them had discussed and decided on a plan to force Sakura away from her course of going wherever she had planned to go, and then meet us in a secluded location where she would finally and for once understand us. She would want to; we could make this so.

What the nine of us would do afterward was a secret, and I made a point of even keeping from thinking about it too terribly much.

"Neji and Deidara saw some very interesting things recently. Deidara believes Sakura somehow caused a car wreck on a highway not far from here. Neji saw this too, but some time after the event occurred."

We were silent. My tail curled and clicked as I turned over the thought in my mind. Deidara, half-parrot_, _somehow had the greatest sense of smell out of all of us. I would think Naruto would have that trait, being a canine, but there's always little quirks and mutations in a birth, such things as left-handedness or birthmarks. Nothing can be done for it. I'm sure not even Chambers can change every piece of DNA to fix such things.

Still, according to what Deidara had scented, little Sakura had caused a car wreck. I thought of her kicking a speeding car and sending it flying and flaming into a ditch. Somehow I thought I must have it wrong. "How?" I murmured, and within myself I was purring at such an amusing picture.

My elder only shrugged. "They weren't sure. Her scent crossed the road at the exact point the truck's did. They were almost touching for a moment or so in time."

"They didn't touch, though. The scents didn't touch."

Kakashi and Zetsu both shook their heads. I came to an answer for them. "Then obviously she was out on the road for whatever reason and moved out of the way before a truck ran her over. That's a very easy problem to work, Kakashi. I'm surprised you didn't figure it out yourself."

One glimpse of his covered face told me Kakashi disagreed. He elaborated his feelings further. "You think Sakura—no, Sasori, you think anyone—would stand in the middle of a busy road? A speeding highway, no less?" he asked me incredulously, and I could recognize the tone that suggested he was somewhat embarrassed. I nodded. "There is no other explanation."

"Who cares, as long as it didn't hurt her?" Naruto barked, his tail bristling. "It didn't, did it?" Zetsu laughed while I cuffed Naruto's ear with one claw. While he whined and complained of the pain, I explained in very dumb terms that, no, she'd gotten away from the wreck perfectly fine, which I somehow felt to be true. Even after I was done, Naruto held his fox ear in a fist and bared fangs at me. I ignored him.

"And your plan?" I addressed Zetsu instead of Kakashi, whose eyes still showed embarrassment and wouldn't want to be addressed now.

Both sides of Zetsu's face grinned. _"Perfect," _They said together. And Naruto and I were told exactly of what had happened, from their finding Sakura inexplicably inside the house of two human men (here we had to stop because everyone erupted and was fighting not to claw the bark off of trees. Human men with Sakura. What the hell makes her think they're worth her time? Her presence?) and up until Zetsu had pushed her into the bushes, threatening to kill the two men unless she came to Buffalo Jump to meet us.

And the parts in between about how they tricked her, and Neji was the one to pounce on her and pin her. Eight years of trying, and he had won. Touched her, spoken to her, connected to her first. It almost hurt to know this.

It did hurt, in fact. But I nodded my praise to Zetsu and Kakashi's conduct of the plan they had made. Naruto, however, dashed up to the two of them and made them give him awkward high-fives, shouting out how perfect and amazing everything had gone. But he also showed anger at not being able to see her, when the others had. Naruto was crouched in Kakashi's tree branch, his ears pointing irritably at Kakashi as he explained the last time Deidara had beaten him to something. I chose this time to ask Zetsu, who appeared bored with Naruto's ranting, "Do you know where Buffalo Jump is, or did you just repeat the name of a location you've heard of?"

"_That's half the reason Deidara and Neji left to guard the humans' house, fucking moron!" _The black half hissed, narrowing one eye and looking thoroughly insane. _"If she came back to take them to safety, they would kill them as I threatened. The other part was that I told them to find a map if they could. I know the place is somewhere in Canada. Definitely. ...But other than that I really have no goddamn clue." _

My breath came long and disappointed. Even we, the creators of the ultimatum, needed a map to show us the way to the rendezvous. That was straight-up shameful. "Of course you don't. Are we supposed to wait until they come back?"

He shook his head. "We'll go the the house once Naruto shuts up." Hearing his name, and the words "shut up," Naruto did just that, jumped down from Kakashi's tree branch and looked me straight in the eye. In the span of a few seconds, he'd become serious. "Then let's go. I want to find that place as soon as we can."

There was no need for talk. I glanced at Kakashi, and found the same grave expression in the one eye he let the world see. Our dream was coming closer and closer. One moment, we stood still as stone with snow falling quietly around us. The next, we were gone, running at full speed back towards the suburbs that lay scattered off the city, towards Neji and Deidara.

It would only be a few more days.

666

January 13th, I'm guessing about 7:00, since the sun's coming up. God, I'm tired. ...Sakura POV

666

Well, that was one plan achieved. Not only did I nab a map from those two hunters—Rock Lee and Maito Gai, so said the ID cards I'd found in their car—but I also got a snack! Cheetos were one of the many things Hidan and Kakuzu had fed to me yesterday night, and I'd especially loved them. Cheese me. Is that the right slogan?

Okay, so after I'd dived down, kicked the older man, Gai, onto that pillow-net thing, which was some patented Chambers creation, I swear, and then did the same to his son, I looked around their jeep. It was a Wrangler jeep, I recognized it from the thorough descriptions Hayate had said many months before. (Yet another example of how they'll talk about everything and anything in front of me, not care, and not know how much I learned from them. Cha-ching! Knowledge!)

I didn't want to rifle around with their stuff too much; I was here to take one item that I needed, not plunder from innocents. I only took the map because I'd seen another one in the car that covered mostly the same area, so if I took one, it wouldn't be a loss on their past. And I only took the little bag of Cheetos because I was very hungry—I still am—and Hidan told me that a small bag like this costs a dollar. No matter their financial situation, I couldn't be cleaning out their wallets that much by taking a bag of Cheetos.

So, here I was, flying just below the clouds, almost fully out of sight. It was a slight risk: if anyone had binoculars, they might see me, but then again, I'm very fast, could pass as a big bird from that distance, and I can't really see towns or landmarks very well while submerged in clouds. So I flew around and matched landmarks and cities to their map counterpart.

I had seen the "welcome" sign to a town called Abbotsford awhile ago. According to their ID cards, Lee and Gai are both residents here, who live on Turret Road. Anyway, um. Next, I was looking for a town called Hope, though honestly, I'd take any town at the moment. I'd been flying above this big highway for almost an hour now. It was early morning, and adults were heading off to work in their cars far below me. I can guarantee there was some Chambers employee, though not necessarily someone who knows about the laboratories, driving under me at some point in time. The company is just too huge, too widespread, for that _not _to happen. I've probably flown over half a dozen Chambers department stores already, continuing the daily struggle to beat out Wal-mart for "We sell everything better than you!"

I wonder if I passed Rosedale? It was a smaller dot than Hope, which indicated a smaller town. It was near the highway I was flying over, though, so either it's a little ways off from the highway, or I'm getting so sleepy I missed seeing it. That could, unfortunately, be true. I haven't slept in awhile so it might be catching up to me. I think I'll find a tree to sleep in after another half hour or so.

Hey, I think the temperature dropped a little! It must be due to the mountainous area around this place. Mountains in general were colder than lower, flatter ground. But that didn't stop me from getting a burst of warmer air on occasion, a thermal, which pushed me up and made flying almost completely effortless. I could literally float on air. I suddenly felt like a princess. But then the thermal faded and I was back in the comfortable cool-chill-cold of Canadian airspace and back to reality.

Hey. Hey, there's Hope! With a movement of my wings, upward and folding back towards each other, I dropped a few hundred feet, briefly, to see the sign that welcomed visitors, and happily flew over the town while getting back up to a higher, safer altitude. After a few minutes, I passed by the last few houses on the outskirts of the town and found my way back to the highway that the map noted as Crowsnest Highway. The next big town appeared to be called Princeton (that's not where the big, prestigious college is, though...I think...) and according to the key, looked seventy or eighty miles away. I wonder if I can fly to Princeton and fall asleep there, maybe in some mountain cave? And maybe get another snack? A drink would be nice, too. I'm starting to miss all the cans of Sprite the cousins had let me have.

I did just that, following the highway to Princeton with the map held safely in my first. It wasn't snowing here like it had been in the area between Portland and Abbotsford, but it was cold enough to make me content and comfortable. Again I felt the feeling of potential freedom that all birds probably feel: the feeling that the sky was a place where no one could get them, and they could fly wherever they wanted.

So, on the way to Princeton, I did just that: wallow in the feeling that I was alone and out of danger up here. Nothing could get me, catch me, annoy me, piss me off, hurt me or scare me. I could strip all my clothes and no one would see or care. Oh, did I mention I got my clothes back from the cousins? They're washed and feel all cozy! Okay, so maybe I'm not gonna strip off all my clothes anyway. They're not suited for winter at all, (but hey, I am) and they're good clothes.

I'm not sure how much time passed while I just flew in a straight line through the cold air over the mountains and woods and thought about being free and sleeping at the same time. I was lucky I didn't have another one of my episodes where a few thoughts turn into a five-hour long discussion with myself. Sure, I have a map to help me now, but I don't want to spend more time on this than I have to.

I am flying to my doom, after all.

Well that sounded depressing. Now when I find a suitable sleeping tree I'm going to have nightmares. Way to be, Sakura. You may have just screwed one of your last peaceful sleeps as a living, breathing creature. Hey, does that sign on the highway say, "Princeton, 3 miles"? Hey, it does! I'm three miles away from a good night's, er, good day's, sleep! Hell yes, I feel like I could sleep on a bed of nails if I had to.

After a few moments I saw a few pale lights of the next town, Princeton. I pulled my wings up and drifted lower and lower until I could make out the details of individual houses and trees and hills. _'Someone could see me if I'm this low,' _I told myself worriedly. _'Find a tree, any tree that's far off from a trail or from the town.' _This I did. I searched for an evergreen tree, which would still be leafy-green in winter, and settled my little self snugly in a fork of two thick branches. I was a hundred feet up from anything that could hurt me.

And yet that little doom thought from several minutes ago hadn't left me. It was not one thought anymore but many thoughts, many possibilities, enough to fill an dream or an entire book, an entire movie, and then I was watching Gory Demise: The Movie in my head. Completely involuntarily, I saw myself, moving quietly along and then being grabbed. Pulled down. My hands tied to the earth while something tore my legs off. Raped me. Grew thumbs with which to press into my eyes. It took a bite out of my arm and fed it to rats. And people watched, and a few of them trickled towards me so they could talk to me. Be quiet, they said. Or, take your wings off. Both these I did. I was nothing now, alone and weak, a single, brainless cell thrashing in a petri dish. And like any single cell with no other element to unify with, I continued thrashing until I died.

Oh, please please don't let it be this way. I want to save my friends but I don't want to die.

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I don't…know the time… ...Gaara POV

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I don't know if I had a dream or not. It might have been real. I might have woken up from that silent place where the world morphed every few minutes. Maybe this was still part of the dreamscape, and this was just another world I was seeing. This world seemed different, though. There were no people walking around me or through me, and I could hear things again. Actually, it was frightening. I would rather have those silent, predictable landscapes around me. This makes me feel like something bad, something horrible, is going to happen to me any minute. This makes me think that Dad's going to come into my room any minute.

It would be so like him to approach me when me when I'm helpless and injured in a bed. Will it be his usual fists this time? His fists. His fists. My father's fists are all I know of him.

For some reason, I dreamed—or did I experience?—I was in a hospital bed, and there was something beeping beside me. I could feel that the dirty jeans and jersey my sister had gotten for me were gone. They were replaced with something lighter and cleaner. I couldn't move so I couldn't tell what exactly I was wearing. There was no one in the room, but that was okay. As long as it wasn't my brother or sister, I couldn't stand being in another room with anyone.

Temari told me she'd help me fix that one day, help me be okay with people, but I just can't find it in me to believe her. She wasn't there the last time I tried to talk to someone. I tried to order food at McDonald's on my own, and it was so terrible, so intimidating and so humiliating that that was what qualified as human contact for me, that I fainted at the counter and Kankurou had to carry me home. I thought about how he'd carried me and I still smelled fries all around us. It was so pathetic. So stupid. I had kept my eyes shut because I didn't want to see it happening. People stared. I knew just what they thought: What the fuck was happening in a family, when one brother was unconscious, and the other one had to carry him like a corpse, and also carried McDonald's food like it was just as important? What the hell was going on there?

I hate this. I hate it all and I want to go back to my dreams.

Maybe that thing beeping beside me is just a dream, too. I couldn't move…at least I don't think I could. I tried twitching a finger. I tried many times before I felt some response in my fingertip, a teeny blip of motion. But it was something. Next, I took a huge step forward by trying to turn my head to the right towards the beeps. I couldn't. Well…maybe left will work better.

It worked. I hadn't really thought it would. I tried to move a little more, and this sent cold aches lancing up and down my neck and upper back. But I could look out the open window now. Was it actually open, or were the blinds just drawn away? Either way, I could look outside into what looked like a courtyard. It was surrounded by walls on all sides, and had many trails running through grass, flowers and garden-scenery sorts of objects. I think Kankurou was down there.

He was. He was down there in a _wheelchair. _

I remembered the three of us riding in the smelly moving truck. I was looking at the scrapbook Temari had made of us. It was several years old, and only had eleven pictures. My favorite one was the eighth, one Temari had taken herself with a print-out camera she found. It was of all three of us. We were dirty. I was eleven at the time and my shirt had a mud stain on the bottom that smelled like dog fur. Kankurou was twelve and thought his deepening voice was just the shit. Temari was thirteen and her face already looked twenty and too hard. But she was my sister and that was all I knew of her, so the fact that she was twenty when she was really thirteen did not bother me. Temari has always looked hard and tough and too old for herself. She must always be. I remembered that Kankurou had a black eye in that picture, but he still smiled. How had he gotten it again? I was thinking that when the truck started going crazy.

We must have crashed, or hit another car. That's the only reason I could be in a hospital, right? The only possible reason why Temari wasn't standing protectively by my side and looking at me with her tough face, and why Kankurou was stuck in a wheelchair when he should have been loud and mobile like always. This suddenly seemed like less of a dream. I must be awake…right?

I squinted to see better through that window. I could now see Kankurou wheeling towards a person who was kneeling by the flowers. Next thing I know, Kankurou pulls the man's tail…what? His tail? And these two things pop up out of his hair. They look like animal ears. Cat ears, even. Maybe I _am _dreaming, after all.

The cat-man grabbed Kankurou by his collar and nearly lifted him out of his chair. Their mouths moved. The cat-man let go and ran to the nearest wall. He crouched and then leaped so high that he landed on the roof, and then dashed across the roof itself. I think I saw him leap down, off the roof and away from the hospital.

That can't be real. That _can. Not. _Be real. I stared for a while, it might have been a long while or a short while, until Temari came out of some doors and went into the courtyard with a cast on her arm. So she'd broken an arm and Kankurou had broken both legs. They talked for a bit and then Temari wheeled Kankurou back towards the doors she'd come out of. I hoped they were coming to me. Now that I saw them together, it made me feel sort of left out. If this is a dream, I hope the next dream is about my siblings. Men with animal ears are okay but I want to see my brother and sister.

"Sutton, Frederick! He's awake! He's awake!"

_Huh? Who's awake? Is that woman talking about me?_

"What? Already? Wonderful! Where are his siblings? Somebody go find them."

"His eyes are closing…he's slipping back. He's slipping back into the coma."

"No. No. Here, help me check his pulse, pupil dilation."

Someone's cold hands touched my chest and then some foreign instrument did the same. A metal, doctor thing. Maybe I would have flinched away from it if I had the strength. My mind had gone fuzzy and sleepy and was already halfway into dream-world. I wanted to…just drift away again…get some more rest. I don't think I've felt this exhausted for months. Why am I this exhausted in the first place? I wasn't like this ten second ago. _What_ is going on?

"The poor boy's lucky. He had cerebral hemorrhage, but it—"

"Excuse me. What hemorrhage, Doctor Sutton?"

"Oh my god, these stupid interns don't know anything! Cerebral hemorrhage, Thompson! Blood leaking into the brain. Gaara, here, is just plain lucky his ambulance didn't get stuck in traffic. He almost had too much for us to drain out."

"He's just plain lucky his father bit the dust. Look at his bruises. His prick father did that."

"Yeah, well, he's living, okay? He had a stroke of luck in the actual accident, with his siblings landing on top of him. Saved him from being crushed by furniture and they broke two legs and an arm doing it."

The doctors and interns and folk kept on talking, and I...I wanted to cry. Temari broke her arm and Kankurou broke his legs…for me? To protect me from dying? I hoped my muscles still had the energy to smile. I tried, just to make sure, and I was wrong. No smile. Well, that didn't matter. My feelings about them did.

This is going to be a good sleep indeed. Slowly but surely I felt an indescribable sensation of content and calmness coming closer and closer. It told me I was going to have good dreams about my siblings in this nap. Good dreams. For goddamn once.

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Well, this is a shorter chapter than usual. Only ten pages. I guess it's because I'm making this a three-for-one chapter for you guys. There's another third left, meaning a chapter twelve, but I'll wait a bit. It's about noon on Christmas Day as I type this, so on Christmas night when a few people have seen this I'll post the last piece. This is a selfish practice I'm doing mainly because lots of people only review the last chapter, and I'm trying to teach you guys gratitude and patience...just because.

Please know that I found the male experiments' POVs hard, always, so I struggled with Sasori's. If it seems OOC…well, I've already explained why in earlier chapters. Look back to see.

Oh, since I just kinda feel like it, I'm gonna post the experiments' ages right here for you. Enjoy and don't correct me on my math. I wrote my own fifteen-year calendar/list so I could make sure their birthdates was right and I will be mildly ticked if all that work was wrong. Also, some birthdays, like Deidara's, are unknown so I made them up, and if we fans discover them later, it'll be a shame because I'm not changing them.

September 19th, 1992: Kakashi is born. As of January 13th, 2008: 15 years old.

February 11th, 1993: Sasori is born. As of January 13th, 2008: 14 years old.

June 9th, 1993: Itachi is born. As of January 13th, 2008: 14 years old.

May 25th, 1994: Zetsu is born. As of January 13th, 2008: 13 years old.

August 30th, 1995: Deidara is born. As of January 13th, 2008: 12 years old

July 3rd, 1996: Neji is born. As of January 13th, 2008: 11 years old.

March 18th, 1997: Kisame is born. As of January 13th, 2008: 10 years old.

October 10th, 1997: Naruto is born. As of January 13th, 2008: 10 years old.

March 28th, 1999: Sakura is born. As of January 13th, 2008: 8 years old.

Ta and Happy Holidays...Storm


	12. Twelfth

**EDIT, September 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, July 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

Yeah, I said I was gonna post this last third of my 43-page work on Christmas night, but I changed my mind and decided to post it now, New Year's Eve, hours before the new year. It starts out as almost filler...but will segue into some seriously important shit later on. Another (belated this time) Merry Christmas to all, and Happy New Year. Enjoy the last 2007 work of StormDragon666.

Chapter the Twelfth.

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I think this dream took place was a little before sunrise. But hey, what do I know, I'm dreaming. ...Sakura's Dream POV

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It was rare for me to have dreams that were...like flashbacks. I enjoyed my realistic-but-tinged-with-wtf-moments dreams, like Karin performing surgery while wearing a Dr. Seuss hat or something. I would have liked that. But no. My subconscious was taking the reins and it wanted to steer me into a corral not of my choosing, and all I could do was watch.

Watch was a very apt word, because unlike real life, I was seeing through the eyes of some invisible camera; I could look at myself like any spectator would. At this time I must have been around five years old. Almost. Ibiki had marked my "age appearance" as around eleven or twelve, but I looked generally the same. I still had my grey tee and white athletic shorts combination, but maybe they had been manufactured a little smaller because I was not quite at my full height back then, and I was feeling the start of gangly, un-belonging puberty, which even as a genetic freak I couldn't escape. My hair may have been an inch or two longer, because I remember at this time it got into my eyes sometimes and I spent too much time combing it with my fingers.

So I looked a little different. The essentials, the meat of my life, were the same. All my tests pointed at a sub-par IQ because I was allegedly only a few notches up from MR; I wore a shock collar at all times; my wings had never been opened and I had never spoken or made a sound. These were all constants in my life and I, the dreaming Sakura, hated them more than ever.

The skin beneath my shock collar itched. That was a constant, too. It still had faint traces of newness, and I was angry because I thought if I got used to it (as used to it as I could get, with my far-off plan of being free and collar-less) then it would itch less. Every few months, someone would come and fiddle with it and it would grow a little, expand so it wouldn't have to be taken off and replaced as I grew up. But that wasn't the half of it. The beeping...the beeping drove me up the wall.

The collar beeped every six minutes and four seconds. I learned to time it. I got so far into it that I fancied I knew how many minutes, seconds and _milliseconds _that it took to beep. Every six minutes, it checked my heart rate, energy level, whether I was conscious or not. At least, those are the things I think it was checking, things I had heard people say it was checking. But my sources can be compromised or just lying douchebags sometimes. So what else was the shock collar really checking in on?

Check! This item is now added to Sakura's List of Things To Listen For and Learn.

This time it was Kabuto and an overweight worker named Choza who guided me out of my crate in my room. Choza held the chain that connected to my collar, and acted as a leash to lead me around. It seemed that every time I was taken somewhere, I was taken by a route I'd never seen before or hadn't seen for many, many days. I don't know if this was so I could have some more exercise some days and less on others, or just because the scientists were effing dumb. Maybe I was effing dumb for being so bad at memorizing the routes. Up until my last day at the laboratory, I knew as much of the layout as a well-informed tourist.

This was a route of hallways and staircases I hadn't seen for almost a month. I did remember this window, though. The last time I'd seen it, I had seen a lovely, black bird flying past. It was a pretty scene, a pretty bird. Probably a raven. But before I could ponder if this raven was going to "quoth" anything for me, I saw a familiar door, a door that led to one of the white rooms in which I would see another fellow experiment. So that window represented both death and freedom to me.

Choza was listing out the results of my last blood test, so I had time to contemplate what was beyond that door, and what the encounter would be like, and if I would make it out of this one alive, too. I thought it was brave to openly think those things, but I admit I got scared partway through. I wanted to stop. With my mental tail between my legs, I rewound to my last thought "death and freedom" and tried to merrily conjure up other examples of random nouns that were just as contrasting as death and freedom. Red and blue, Kabuto and Genma, penguins and ostriches, blizzards and wildfires, extemporaneous and formulated, oh wait, those are adjectives. Derp.

But now Choza pushed on my shoulder, reached around me to punch in an unlocking code, and made me face the door. High and ominous and white, with a very, very red doorknob.

Red doors always led to white rooms, that's how it goes. The doors were white themselves, like any other door or wall here, but their doorknobs were red so I called them "red doors." And they always led to rooms that would have another experiment waiting for me inside. There was one red door that actually led to a little closet-like area, an airlock in truth, and then from there you would enter the white room. But I had no such luck to be able to have five seconds to myself in the airlock, because this wasn't the one that had it.

Kabuto grasped my hand and moved it till it was near the doorknob, like he wanted me to open it. When he let go, I let the hand fall dumbly back to my side, and even pulled it up to my chest like I was scared what the terrible doorknob would do to me. Kabuto shook his head and clicked his tongue, and opened the door for me.

A white room was just as totally and frustratingly white as its name. It was also two stories tall and had tons of space to run around it. Usually, it was unbroken space, but sometimes they would spice things up by putting in platforms. Little raised squares of granite. Not big enough to hide behind at all, but big enough to trip over, and _that _was the point. There were never more than three platforms per room. The scientists were more concerned with running and escaping than with using the land as cover, or stealth, or...knowing a landscape or something. (And they think they're _helping _us learn to fight in a future war?) Actually, it was supposed to be about fighting, too, but I never fought, just fled, and they couldn't make me do anything else so that option's out.

This white room was familiar like all others. I think I had been in here last month. It had two platforms. One was barely taller than my knee, just wide enough for a housecat to sit on. The other was larger, off in the far corner. It was a cylinder about waist-high, skinny as a wrist. Not even a platform, but maybe a convincing stack of white Legos. I wish I could play with Legos.

And here…I'll let you guess which experiment stood ready at the other end of the room. Go, on, I'll count to five while you pick...did you guess Naruto? Wrong. Did you guess Itachi? You're wrong again. Did you guess Zetsu? God, I hope you don't keep up this bad streak! Did you guess Sasori? There, you're right.

Poison-fanged and deadly dancer Sasori stood far away in a black coat and grey pants that made his black tail and blindingly red hair even more foreboding that usual. Far away as I was, I still couldn't help but see his glinting, gold eyes that showed he was eager to chase. Damn eyes. The door closed behind me, and I stupidly turned as though making sure it had really closed, then turned back to face Sasori with a new and more appropriate gaze full of apprehension. I didn't have to fake that. In my dreamer-vision, I could see my younger self's expression, how real it was. I pitied myself, having to watch this. I didn't deserve this and I never did.

We were very far off from each other. But he decided to fix that. He walked closer and closer, tail curling almost elegantly around him, until the distance between us had been halved. Now my wings were trembling along with my arms and legs, and my stomach slowly began its light, sickened lurching that could and would become a turbulent, shuddering bellyache. Sasori and all his friends literally made me sick.

He was almost within jumping distance of me now. It's true that Neji and Kakashi are the best jumpers, but all the male experiments can jump an average of nine or ten feet. So even if his specialty isn't jumping, I must be careful. I sidestepped. Back-stepping would be unwise since being backed into a corner is...is just bad.

Sasori followed me. I began walking sort of sideways, and he followed me, with that evil look of "I'd just love to _get _you" written all over him, in his face, and the posture of his hands, and how he walked and placed his feet. Any second now, he's going to charge and I'm going to have to take a huge leap to the side or something. And as usual, my size and speed will be my greatest allies—I can't really use intelligence here, what with the fact that it would screw my lifelong plan. So I just have to stay calm and do what I usually—oh, SHIT!

He'd jumped at me while I was lost in thought, that bastard! He leaped forward at me with a hissing sound, and I dodged, instinctively pulling my wings closer to my back to protect me. (Not that it would do any good, really.) I was able to move away a second or so early, thank goodness, and then he twisted and lashed his tail down onto the white floor where my feet had been a moment before.

The floor _cracked._ Sasori's sharp and poison tailtip had crashed into the floor and made a foot-long crack in the material I always thought was _stone._ …Well, then. I'm not as scared as I thought I'd be. Huh. Maybe I suspected he could break rock anyway.

I wasn't lost in thought this time. My thoughts were all in real-time now, watching and predicting his movements, even the ones he made purely to trick me. I saw him coming, turning, kicking off with one foot and sending himself running full speed towards me. He was showing a fang, I noticed, a little sign of thrill or happiness I'd seen Naruto do occasionally. How weird to see the calmer of the group do it. I frowned at him, and almost showed a fang of my own—which would probably be just a tooth since my teeth aren't that sharp, but then noticed the extent of what I did. I had just bared my fangs at him. He's an animal, he'll know what that means.

Yes, he knows. He didn't bare his fangs but smiled, showing no teeth but all of his purpose. He says "challenge accepted."

I didn't give you a challenge, you vicious dumbfuck! But I could never say that to him, not as I was at that time. Five years old, still with huge gaps in my understanding and my knowledge, and not used to my body yet. I ran from him like I always did.

I felt Sasori coming after me by some change, some breeze or even pressure in the air. The fact that I heard him or saw him do it felt less significant at that moment. His claws lashed out at me and in my mind I screeched, with the voice that existed in my head but was not quite the one that would come out of my mouth a few years later. As it was, I felt the unfriendly tear of his ripping feathers out from my wings, from near the second joints. My heart pounded, more than pounded, _beat _mercilessly against my chest and it hurt. I had to turn, change the angle, or he could catch up. Had to move, move, throw the beast off.

And I did just that. With a skid of my bare heel on the floor, I made a hard right. Sasori grunted in surprise and went after me again after making his own turn at a wider angle. I glowed a little inside...I'd gained a little ground! Now I just had to do this over and over again until the scientists called our names on the intercom-thingamajig to stop the chaos. Sasori would stop immediately because he's trained to do that, and I'd run to the other side of the room and wait for someone to drag me away.

Then I felt him breathe, hotly, fiercely, on my ear. I ducked and kicked hard, like, _BAM,_ on my right foot, lowering myself and throwing my body far to the left. It left Sasori's claws missing their target, my head, and it left some distance between us and some unknowable amount of adrenaline surging in me. Sasori stood, curled his tail over and over again. He showed me just how loud and low he could growl when he was at his angriest. I already knew. And I knew he was embarrassed, because he'd missed me twice in a row. It could make him faster. My dreaming self leaned down, invisible, toward my younger self and I yelled out for myself to be careful. I yelled advice to myself, advice I already knew. I already knew that I would make it out of this okay but watching it is making me ill and scared.

I adjusted my posture a little, and in this new pose, the light glinting off the edge of the spectators' window almost caught my eye. Up there, not quite two stories up, the scientists were watching us and were safe and relaxed behind their glass barrier. I almost fancied I could hear Anko in there, laughing at me. She would laugh at me because she's a viciously sado-masochistic bitch, and because she knew the spectrum of anger on which all the other experiments sat. If any of the experiments got mad, the one you had the "least" reason to fear was Kisame. He was large and slow, and had a tendency to be clumsy when furious. But when ones like Kakashi and Sasori got mad, they got faster, harder-hitting, more accurate. And Sasori was mad at me.

And of course he struck very soon. I jumped away before he could move and started running. I heard him behind me. Every half-second I heard the _whisk _sound of his claws slashing at me, the _whinggg _sound of his tailtip lashing at my head, all to the ugly harmony of my heart beating almost angrily against my ribcage. Every second was a second where I could have had a fatal wound. And it was still quiet, but I think I really could hear Anko laughing up there now.

For no particular reason, I ducked suddenly. It was a good choice; Sasori' ran at me and his huge, black tail soared over my head and swept my hair dramatically to the side with the ensuring rush of air. I swept to the left and behind him and continued running. For that piece of a second, we were both running in opposite directions and in my opinion he looked very stupid falling for that.

_'Hahaha! Take that__!' _I cheered. It was pointless, though, 'cause he was immediately twisting and running at me again. It had to be half over by now. Come on, Anko.

I gasped and gritted my teeth as his longest claw barely punctured my wing. Since the day I first saw him and he combed his claws through my hair, this was as close to touching me as he'd ever come.

But that didn't matter. Were his claws poison, too? How much poison could be carried in a nail? Milligrams (or milliliters?) Was it enough to paralyze or wound me? First I wanted to say no, even venom as potent as his should take enough time to take effect that the scientists will already have called this off so oh dammit I couldn't feel my arms.

They were numb, and my wings were erupting with fissures of pain around the puncture point. I ran still. My legs were still fine, and if they were effected, too, I would fight through it. I sped up, panting, thinking that now was about time for the scientists to call this horrible experience off. No, it was past that time. It should have happened already.

I risked a frightened glance up at the window. There was the face of Anko, along with Yuugao and a worker I didn't recognize. Their eyes looked…interested. Of course! They want to know the effect of Sasori's claws in my wing, those assholes! They're gonna make this even longer than usual; who knows how long I'll be running with this pain blasting in my wings and now my back, too. Who knows how long it'll be before it spreads all around. What'll I do? There might be a point where I can't take it, where I fall down, where Sasori finally gets his wish and jabs his tail right into my stomach and…oh lord.

I realized how scared I was, and adrenaline thankfully added another burst to my run. I felt Sasori panting on the feathers that tipped my wings. He was still close. He was way too close. I needed to make a sharp turn. I was doubtlessly in the range of his poison tail again. Yes! I did it! I sidestepped and—

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January 13th, I'm going to assume 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon… ...Sakura POV

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Oh my goddamned God! I almost relived the worst part!

The part where I trip on that _stupid _platform and Sasori jumps up after me, growling, screaming. I know there's a devil behind me. And I land and suddenly he's so, so close I can feel his breath and see his fangs. He grabs at me with his claws and once with his entire arm and again and again and again I dodge him. In theory I could have fought back, pushed his arms away. Parried. But no, I could never do that, not really. Dodging was terrifying enough, and my mad, horrified heart was beating furiously enough already. I had the clarity of mind to think, when I pulled my legs away from a blow from his tail, how much venom is inside that appendage, and how many people can it kill?

My eyes shot open and I actually woke up sweating. It wasn't a cold sweat like you might think. Even though the weather was still and cold, this sweat was hot, wet and very uncomfortable. There were several spots on my shirt and shorts that were dark with wetness, like I was some big, athletic guy after playing a basketball game. Though I knew they'd dry if I kept flying, that smell might bother me, or make me smell and stand out among the wild things in the woods. Make me noticeable. I had to find a river or something and wash my clothes. Then they'd dry while I flew _and _smell like nature. Hopefully, I won't have to pick off any leeches when I'm done…

Well, what do you know. Twenty feet from my tree branch, there's a little creek I can bathe in. All right, little is downplaying it. From one bank to the other was about a ten-foot hop, and there was a fallen tree making a bridge from one side to the next a little ways down. I made my way down the bank and stepped into the water. The bottom was rocky in some places and soft in others where plants were growing or where mud had settled, and in these places I liked to stop and squeeze my toes together. Yeep! It tickled!

Okay, here's the part that's gonna make me slightly uncomfortable. I have to find a spot that's deep enough for me to crouch down without exposing any feminine parts of my body to any forest dweller or hippie who may be watching. Sure, I'd probably hear any animals or people near me, but I can't fight the anxiety I'm being subjected to right now, my inner reaction to every moving shadow and breeze. Thankfully, it only took a couple seconds for me to find, er, fall, into a section of river where it must have been nearly four feet deep. The rocks and ground on the river bottom had just fallen away in a little underwater cliff, and I fell face-first into the river. I felt the bottom with my hands (and I think maybe some poor, frightened fish, too) and stood up.

_'Damn, if this was just a little deeper I could actually swim in here!' _But it wasn't. I was just going to take a quick bath and be on my merry way. I'm already completely wet anyway, even my wings…wings…wings…Shit.

Wet wings can't fly. Or...barely can. Various encounters with Kisame over the years have shown me this.

I spread them fully to test my current ability to zip off into the sky should I need to. I flapped. Water droplets fell on the surface of the stream for almost twenty seconds, and flapping was noticeably more difficult, a more burdened process. After this, my body lifted out of the water slowly, and I had to flap twice as hard and fast to get my usual speed and levitation. Okay, so I could do it. I don't think I'd ever had the time or chance to manage it when I was with Kisame. But know I knew it took work, hard work. I guess I should only swim or bathe when I know I'm safe. Wonder how often that's gonna be. I wonder if I'll ever get to use soap again.

I just had to get this over with. My thinking of it was done now. I stripped off the clothes and held them in my arms as I ducked under the water. Everything but my shoulders and above were covered in dark water. I scrubbed my arms a legs a little, waved them in the water to shake off any sweat particles that could still be sticking to me, and then dunked my head under. I combed through the tangly mess as best I could for almost two minutes, which was my average breath-holding time, then went back up for air. My clothes were in my arms the whole time; they should be clean enough.

I dressed in the water, just for safety, then climbed out. I thought briefly that it was cold out here, and wiped my feet on the grass idly. I tried not to think about the baths I got at Chambers, but the thoughts came robotically anyway and I was reduced to just thinkinga bout them in erratic flashes. I got one every other day, and always it was Karin or Anko who helped me into the tub and do everything else that was needed. Naturally, they thought I was too stupid to bathe myself or wash my own hair and had to "help" me. Ugly, embarrassing, unpleasant experience I try my best to block out of my mind; I better stop thinking about it completely.

Okay, let's look at the map again…hmm…it looks about two hundred miles from Princeton to this next big dot, Castlegar, and then…how about I skip over a bunch, about four hundred miles, to this dot here. Medicine Hat? Oh my gosh, I wish I could live there! Or maybe I could just get to a payphone and call the cousins and say, "Hey, guys, I'm calling you from Medicine Hat! Do you need anything?" Ha! I slay me. Okay, anyway, from Medicine Hat it's only about a hundred miles to Lethbridge. And I learned from the tourism pamphlets in Lee and Mr. Gai's jeep that Buffalo Jump is very near Lethbridge.

From here, Princeton-area-ish, to Lethbridge, should be, eh, five hundred and fifty miles. I'm guessing it's about 2:30 in the afternoon now. I think I can be there in seven hours or so, give or take.

I jumped into the nearest low-hanging tree branch I could find, and half-spread my wings. I shook water droplets off and dried them a little, listening to the sound of the spray on the leaves. I liked that sound, and simled at it. In the meantime, the cold water that had soaked my skin, hair and clothes was kinda bothering me. Yeah, it made me kinda cold, but mostly it was just uncomfortable, like not being able to scratch an itch. I waited-slash-dried in the quiet and peaceful tree for only a few minutes before crouching down, jumping up and taking off from the tree.

I had a lot of flying to do, and I was very hungry right now. I'd have to drop into Princeton and try to find some kind of food. If I had to go around to a dumpster and dive for half-eaten bag of Cheetos, petty as it may be, that's what I'll do. Because I'm really starting to miss the meals I ate at the cousins' house. Ice cream, popcorn, salad dressing and tacos. Geez, I'm hungry. Okay, Cheetos would be just fine. Maybe I'll have to go swimming in a Dumpster and find a _big _bag of Cheetos. I'm sure there's somebody out there who's wasteful enough to toss a bag like that still partially full.

The food would give me an energy boost which I needed for the long flight, and for the blood-chilling battle that was doubtlessly waiting for me at You-Know-Where.

Well, it was for my dearest friends. My only friends. I just have to remember that.

666

Late at night…January 13th…ughhhhh…Fucking clock says it's 5:25 AM ...Anko POV (AN: We are going back in time about 14 hours here)

666

I woke up from having a dream that I could barely remember. I keep seeing this three-legged horse in my mind, and I think it's pulling a chariot, but other than that I really have no goddamned idea why I woke up scared and feeling I should check under my bed for monsters. This probably stemmed from this childhood fear that bites me in the ass once in a while. Frigging dad his telling me panthers lived in the basement.

So, that childhood fear made me get up out of bed, go downstairs to the kitchen of my house and turn on the light. There were definitely no fuckin' panters in here, I decided as I scratched the edge of my tanktop. I guess I should eat a snack and go back to bed. A couple hours back, Karin and I had gotten back from searching the woods around the city of Portland. We had found a feather of Sakura's, and even a depression in the grass, of her size, that proved she had been sitting in that spot less than twenty minutes before.

We found Deidara, Neji, Kakashi and Zetsu standing in a burned clearing near that spot, staring into the woods. The clearing was burned, I'm guessing, by Sakura's electric attack, which proves more than ever we need to be pretty fucking careful with her. It made me question the idea of ordering rubber suits from Yashamaru's warehouse. What good is a rubber suit going to do if you're facing a creature that can torch a dozen trees? She'll shock your heart dead and burn whatever's elft to high Heaven. It had never exactly hit me before then that Sakura was really, truly dangerous.

The male experiments were probably waiting for us to come and command them to go after her. They haven't got the initiative or overall intelligence to try and chase after her of their own accord. We gave them the okay, and they all took off running, Deidara and Neji in one direction, Kakashi and Zetsu in the other.

So Karin, our squads and I searched at least ten miles' worth of forest in about an hour, searching for clues of any kind that Sakura had been here. We found none, so we drove back to the Tillamook Forest, avoiding as many campers as we could, found our hidden laboratory building with its lovely invisible paint, parked our cars, and went back in. Kabuto had a surprise video for us when we got back. It was a feed from the camera in Zetsu's collar.

Sakura could _speak _to the male experiments. They pinned her down and didn't beat her to a bloody, mercy-begging pulp. And—this is just my own secret, wild theory...but I wonder if it occurred to clever Kabuto, too—Zetsu _let her go. _

Dude, I don't wanna think about work now! I want to sleep and eat and snore! I was given the okay by Orochimaru to go home and sleep for a while, and I had to spent it sleeping, not thinking about work. It's usually not that much of a hassle, but this past week my job has been my only concern. My cat, Jumper, (don't you start bitching about his name! He likes jumping!) must have been starving while I was away the past week. I spent most of my time at the lab, and when I got home all I wanted to do was fall on my bed and sleep and not search for catfood.

I hardly had time to sleep anyway, since braniac witch Number 9 screwed up the lives of all Chambers secret lab workers on Earth. If the world finds out she exists, that genetic mutant experiments aren't just the shithole of science fiction, Orochimaru's entire corporation will be in deep shit, be the top story on every news channel and Facebook feed, and the whole company would probably shut down. The economy of America would suffer a blow to the gut without our business, and consequently many other major global powers. A depression would come. Countries would be accused of having known about the laboratories Chambers secretly supported. Countries would object. Politicians would yell, citizens would bitch, and somewhere in there a war would probably break out. Sakura, you're a catalyst if one ever existed.

Well that's enough of that junk. I came here to sleep, not...have realitic nightmares like that.

Just now, I saw fat old Jumper asleep on the couch, on...my logbook? Aw, damn, if he pees on that I'm gonna be huge trouble. All employees in the laboratories have one. A scientific diary which requires an entry once per day, with very formal and businesslike writing. No "today totally sucked" or "this ain't cool" allowed (Genma.) Well, Chambers is in my screwy brain already. I may as well read myself to sleep with my logbook. (That way I won't think about the panther and have an even harder time getting myself to sleep.)

So I went over to Jumper and slipped the logbook out from under his fat, white butt. He didn't make any noise, just twitched his ear. Jumper's personal "fuck you" or "fuck off" motion was twitching his ear, like a person would stick up their middle finger and get across the same message. I think it's adorable.

I turned off the kitchen light, went back upstairs to my bedroom and sat on my bed with the lamp on. I opened the logbook to a random page. I wrote this entry on May 22nd, 2005. Sakura, who I can't get out of my mind because she's really fucked my sleep schedule, would have been six years old, and appeared to be a twelve-year-old human. I remember her hair being a little longer then. It looked nice.

_Daily Log. __July__ 20__th. __Writer, Anko Mitarashi, Head of Maintenance Work _

_Today, unfortunately, no progress has been made with any experiment or electrical device today. Progress is nil, essentially. But as fillin a logbook with nothing is in violation of the guidelines, I shall fill space by listing out the known relationships of all the experiments I can name during my block of writing time. __Though all males tend to see each other and then break into fights, there have been times when they act content around each other. There have been times, when near a certain one of their brethren, they acted abnormal. Content or even affectionate towards one or more of their fellows. It is my hope that when a new employee is hired at this laboratory, I may hand them a copy of this entry and they may have some hands-on information on the experiments' relationships. So no, Karin, this is not a waste of space. _

_Please note that the experiments may be informally referred to from time to time._

_We should start the fact that all experiments have strained bonds with another. Most often they are seen trying to kill each other (save for encounters in surgical rooms or examining rooms, at which point they stare glumly and continue to accept the meds and trials being performed on them), but content and even affectionate interactions have been observed. The reasons are still being studied as of this date, as it is very strange that these creatures would try to kill each other most of their encounters and casually communicate on some other.  
_

_We should start with Number 1, nicknamed "Kakashi" by some. His strongest relationships seem to be with Number 3, "Itachi," and Number 8, "Naruto." Numbers 3 and 1 both have red eyes, their irises bled out surgically, and they both seem to acknowledge this connection. Their relationship appears to be the most complex, as they have been observed sitting down, looking each other in the eye, and making noises at intervals. Some of our employees go so far as to say the two are talking during these moments. Trials and hypotheses are still being pursued as to whether or not this is true. Whatever the case, even in front of his "friend", Itachi, Kakashi is still unwilling to take away the two scarves which cover his mouth and nose, and red eye and forehead covered, respectively. He acts very nervous and exposed when these are taken away and apparently not even Itachi s worth such a feeling.  
_

_Number 1's second most significant relationship, with "Naruto," seems to be father-son or teacher-student. When not attacking, Number 1 sometimes demonstrates movements or attacks for Number 8 to copy, similar to a wild cat teaching its cubs how to hunt. It is unknown why Number 1 takes to Number 8 in such a way, and they sporadically switch from rolling on the floor strangling and clawing each other to a sort of playful hunting lesson. It's speculated that Number 1 has taken Number 8 on as his own "son," though the reason's unknown._

_Sasori is the nickname for Number 2, who is most "attached" to Number 5, "Deidara." __If there is any pair of experiments who are most content with each other, it is these two. Their "content times" are most rare, but a sight to see when they do occur. They have a habit of walking to a wall together, sitting against it, making the same sounds that Itachi and Kakashi do, "talking" sounds. As with the other pair, whether this is conversation or not is still being studied. It seems common for Deidara to "talk" much more frequently than his fellow. Sasori does not "talk" very much of raise his voice. He does, however, claw at or use his tail to strike Deidara when something about the blonde experiment's voice irritates him. Sasori is notoriously irritable.  
_

_Number 3's relationship with Number 1 has already been explored, so we shall move on to a different one, his bond with Number 4, called Zetsu. Zetsu's times of content with other experiments are the most frequent. While most experiments are content with others about eleven percent of their encounters, Zetsu is content with others almost seventeen percent of the time, remaining half-in and half-out of the floor and occasionally standing by a fellow. Zetsu has a seemingly equal relationship with all experiments, and only barely favors Itachi. Employees have theorized that this is due to the strange and complex nature of his body and mind; none of the experiments are mentally capable of understanding Zetsu and his divided self. Zetu's halves appear to agree, for once, that no other experiment is a favorite of his._

_Number 5, Deidara, has already been discussed, so we will move on to Number 6. "Neji" has his best link with Naruto. Their bond is nearly brotherly, and strikes the most untuitive sparks and cocks many confused heads among our employees. The two act like rivals. During their "content times" they will playfully spar instead of attempt to fatally wound each other. During these times, their attacks are meant to knock the other down, as though the first be knocked off his feet is the loser of a contest. Neji is usually the winner of these contests; when Naruto wins, he becomes ecstatic and leaps around in a sort of victory dance. _

_Number 7 is nicknamed "Kisame." __Strangely, he appears to be most attached to Itachi, and will obey him, despite the fact that he is larger and stronger. When Itachi gestures to some fake rock or tree branch in an Encounter Room, Kisame goes over to it and fetches it for him. Their times of content are sitting in silence with each other. Sometimes they sit on opposite sides of the room, or next to each other, but whenever Itachi seems to want something, he almost always requests that Kisame go to get it for him, instead of getting it himself. Whether this more resembles friendship or slavery is still under study. _

_Number 8's bond with Number 6 has already been discussed, and another shall be discussed as we skip Number 8 to go to Number 9. She is the only female and it is speculated that, because of her gender, she fears the overwhelming amount (and strength) of her male fellows. She seems to fear or at least be wary of all her interactions with her fellows. The closest she has ever come to bonding was a period of two minutes when she was two years old and Number 8 was four. It was the first time the two were placed together inside one of the huge, white Encounter Chambers.  
_

_Naruto has been a playful individual since he was in diapers and never grew out of this. He grins and flags his tail about even when killing. His attitude during this exchange was more mellowed than normal. It was an attitude we've never been able to reproduce in him since (outside of drugging him, of course). Naruto, seeing what appeared to be a six-year-old child shuffling soundless and alone on the other side of the room, presented himself to her in a friendly way. Sakura watched his every move (Yuugao has documented that Sakura spent a lot of time glancing down at Naruto's ankle, which was dark and bruised at the time) but allowed him within her personal space. She extended a hand to him and Naruto grinned and bowed his head, allowing for Sakura to more easily pet his second set of ears, the feline set atop his head. We do not have that great a recording of it, but Naruto most certainly purred as she rubbed his ears. _

_It was a truly heartwarming scene, until Naruto's purring grew so loud that it scared Number 9 away; Number 8 punched the ground out of frustration of the loss of his ear massage. Perhaps frustrated at seeing creature who had begun to be his friend now running in fear, Naruto was compelled to give chased. And so it has been for the last six years.  
_

_It appears I was lucky enough to time to list all of the notable relationships, but I must stop here. I would continue to list which experiments have the most intense and seemingly hateful battles, but Number 7 is due have his third and hopefully effective polio vaccination, and I can't miss it. Number 7 is the most vulnerable of all nine of the experiments to disease, and the last thing we want is for the most physically powerful experiment to fall victim to a disease that was defeated in my parents' day.  
_

I stopped and didn't read the last few sentences describing what weird and improbable diseases Kisame had contracted in his years. Jumper had come into my room and leaped up on my bed to sleep on me. After reluctantly reading the last paragraph, I fell asleep using his big, white butt as a pillow. I had several hours to sleep yet before I had to go back to the lab to work god only knows how many more suspenseful hours.

Thinking about the experiments in their rare friendly days brought a faint smile to my face. It was actually kinda nice to think about Sasori and Deidara grinning and kicking at each other like exuberant lion cubs, instead of Sakura standing alone and cussing at me like a...like a what? She's a thing all her own. Think I'll go back to the happy, silly experiments now. I need to go to sleep thinking of something pleasant. So I hugged Jumper and did just that.

666

January 13th, I'm pretty sure…About 4:00 in the afternoon, maybe 5:00. Geez, it's cold. ...Kisame POV

666

I had been following Neji's instructions for over twelve hours now. Or maybe eighteen. I don't have a watch or a great internal clock, so I dunno, really. What he told me was to run into the woods, keep away from humans and roads and towns, and wander around and pretend to search for Sakura until another one of my friends came to fetch me. Itachi is usually the only one who commands me, and even though Neji is a friend of mine, I just would rather not take orders from him. I sort of feel like he would act more smug and powerful than the others. But this time I listened. The situation was grave, and if I didn't do as he told me, the plan and our motives could be screwed for life.

It's this new shock collar. Now I think I understand the pain Sakura must have felt while wearing her own collar. Before her, no other experiment wore a shock collar; we never knew why. That is, excluding Zetsu, who was rumored to wear one when he was so little he couldn't even walk yet. Genma has told stories once or twice about the long and strange operation it took to remove the collar from the skin, 'cause Zetsu's ability to blend into the ground made it absorb into his skin somehow. Zetsu says this isn't true but I think he's lying to keep us from questioning him. If that really did happen, Zetsu would have been hurt. Disturbed. He would be reluctant or even hostile if pressed to talk about it.

Anyhow, these things hurt. Bad. Whenever we did something wrong before, Chambers people would stab us with electric sticks, which, one a scale of one to ten, hurt at a rate of eight. These collars are an eleven on that scale, and when they first put them on us in the lab a few days back, to get extra training for hunting Sakura, they hurt maybe a rate of eight, also. But then again, the whole power box disaster was a thirty-five.

And to think about _that _hurts on a rate of twenty. Not because I could feel my heart being forced to start and stop, start and stop, three times, because my all technicalities I died thrice. But I'm gonna have to pull a Zetsu and just not talk or think about it. These collars, like the power box, will kill us too, if we didn't remove them.

Naruto heard Hayate say that two of us eight have cameras hidden in our collars. He didn't say who, but Sasori is completely convinced that one of them is in mine. Everyone in the pack trust his wisdom. He must be right.

So I agreed to wander around in the woods and pretend to be searching alone. This way, the scientist or worker who was watching through the camera on my collar wouldn't know what was going on or be able to see the others (tracking devices in the collars were another matter but it's not like we can do anything about that.) Plus there was still the problem of the second camera, but Kakashi and Sasori agree it's either on Zetsu's or Itachi's. They can't decide which, and we want the scientists the think we don't know the cameras are there.

And if the scientists see us _not _attacking Sakura, _not _bringing her back to the laboratory, what will happen? Well, if we don't do as instructed, and the scientists and workers see it through the cameras, they'll use a remote, press a button, and we'll be electrocuted to within an inch of our lives if we continue disobeying them. What's the solution?

Destroy these fucking collars. Get away from the Chambers mission. Get back to our _own _mission of getting what's ours.

Sakura had her plan for her whole life. We thought of this one under a week ago.

I rounded a corner of trees and bushes, and idly kicked a fallen log. That was enough to send it rolling about twenty feet till it crashed into another tree and made it shake. Branches were waving back and forth where they'd been smacked by the log. It made me grin. I walked off and away from that area as birds flew off and made funny chirpy sounds above.

So I'm stuck in...silent mode, or something. All I could do now was walk around and think to myself. Not making a sound for so long is hard. I can't understand how Sakura had managed this for her entire life. But I had to. If I make a sound, the scientist watching through the camera on my collar might hear the sound and have his interest piqued. If I make little noise, he might get bored, and it would be best if he's bored, or inattentive or something when our plan's initiated.

The plan, I reminded myself for the twentieth time that day as I walked along a creek, was for another experiment to quietly come up from behind me and slash at my neck, destroying the collar. If the scientist watching through the camera was not really paying attention to the camera, he'd be taken by surprise by the camera's demise (Sakura would like that rhyme, she would smile) and have no idea that another experiment had destroyed it. With luck, he'd think it had malfunctioned, and would use a remote to shock me. This command is supposed to tell us to go back to the lab, but with the collar annihilated, that ain't happening.

Who knows how long it'll be till somebody comes stalking along and tries to make a slash on my neck...which is a super vulnerable part of the body...and might not even succeed, I mean, the collars could be made of unbreakable glass for all we know. Whoever my attacker is could just try to slice it in half and do nothing? What if they _miss? _Oh, please let Neji or Itachi be the one to do it. They're the most accurate, and I'd trust them the most with this. If I sense Naruto or Deidara coming, no offense to them, but I might just gonna turn around and whack them away. Naruto's young and reckless, and even though Deidara's older than me, he's reckless as well and…seriously impulsive and irritable. I don't need somebody getting angry while slashing at my neck.

SHWUNNG!

I felt it on my neck as I heard the sound, both at the same time. Something pushed hard against the shock collar, pushed the hard metal against my skin, and then the feeling was gone. One of my packmates had come, but still: What in the seven fucking hells? I didn't hear him coming? Even now, I can't tell who just attacked me? Well, let's see who it is, then!

I turned around and grasped something, and it turned out to be Naruto's fox ear. It was soft and collapsible and furry and hella weird. He cried out and put his hands on mine and then dug his pointed claws in. "Kisame, stop, stop, _stop_, _stop_! Gaah! Let _go_!"

_'I actually didn't hear Naruto coming? Naruto? Oh, lord, if any of the others heard about this, I'd never live it down. Er…I have to distract him with something. Anything.' _

"Hmph, forgot how sensitive your ears are. Sorry, Naruto." I let him go, and he stepped away, showing me his fangs. He'd probably forgotten the victorious joy of sneaking up on me already.

"Look at the ground, fishstick!" he chuckled, and I tensed up suddenly with hope.

I did look down, and there it was. The shock collar had been ripped into two curved, metal pieces, and on the shorter one I could see a tiny, blue circle flashing and beeping. Malfunctioning. I kicked that piece away, and coincidentally it went towards Naruto. He lifted his foot as it came and kicked it up into the air. When it hit a tree branch, and then the ground again, the little beeping circle had gone dark. The camera was dead; the scientists could no longer see through it.

"Hell yes!" Naruto cheered. He kicked the piece of metal again and it soared away over some bushes and out of sight. "I knew you'd be too bored to notice me coming. Or anyone coming," he added proudly with a wave of his furry tail.

But I couldn't help but still feel slightly disturbed from the suddenness of his attack while I rubbed my raw neck. "You asshole! You almost made that thing cut into my throat! Did you know what you were doing?"

Naruto's mouth curved into a frown. "I got the collar and the camera off you. Be grateful. Besides, I got news for you. We found Sakura! Neji pinned her down a couple miles away and talked to her. Deidara-"

He had to stop because I'd grabbed his wrist, and he was up in the air with his toes barely touching the ground. He was heavy to hold up but I didn't care. "Neji _pinned _her? Neji really pinned her?"

His whole face, smothered in indignation now, suddenly broke up. Part crying, part amazement, and all irrepressible joy. "Yes. They got her on the ground and Neji...Neji just jumped and he got her. He won." From where he hung, Naruto explaned the whole meeting to me as Kakashi, Zetsu and Deidara had relayed it to him. They spoke to her, argued with her, felt rotted inside when she refused to believe they actually cared for her and wanted to protect and love her, and then had to let her go anyway. But there was a meetingplace, too, and everybody would soon be on the way.

"But where was she before? When you first found her?" I pressed. I got ready to keep pressing, because Naruto looked ready to bite his own tail off with frustration and impatience, but he kept talking.

"She was at this house in the city with two guys. Neji could hear them watching movies. _No, _before you ask, I have no idea in hell _why_ she was sheltering with strange males. Kakashi got her attention, she came out of the house, flew a couple miles into the woods to try and keep us away from them. And out there in the woods is where everything happened."

The last minute of my life had brightened all of it. I had just heard a lifelong dream being completed. The pink speed demon we'd all tried to catch for years had been caught for the first time. And Neji had been the one to do it. Lucky little fuck. He must have been so ecstatic to finally do it. And distraught to be hated anyway.

"And they got her to talk." Naruto was incapable of hiding a smile as he repeated that part. Of course. "Zetsu threatened to kill the two guys she was with unless she went to the place he wanted her to go. She's probably flying there right now. So claw my collar off so we can meet up and go there—HEY!"

I stalked up to him (probably looking intimidating, sorry, man) and grasped the collar on his neck before the young fox could continue talking. I squeezed my fingers around and was able to feel how sore and raw the fox's neck had become. We'd all have raw skin once our collars were off, I had known that, but Naruto's felt especially hurt and red. That was strange; if he was hurt or had an injury, he always told us immediately and pestered us until we helped him with it somehow. The situation must have made him think otherwise. I squeezed the metal and heard it groan.

I snarled, "Goddamn, this is hard! How did you cut mine in two with just a claw attack?"

Naruto was trying to pull away away from me in hopes that the tug-of-war movement would break it. As he put a hand on it and tried to squeeze the metal, he screeched, "Nngh, this _hurts! _I don't know how I did it, maybe the angle I hit—Aughh!—cut into some weak part!" He must have been right. If I couldn't break this collar with his hands, and Naruto had done it somehow with a claw, then there must be some little weak point in these things that I wasn't touching. Sucks to be corrected by the boy who barely understands multiplication.

Well, I wasn't going to waste time looking for it. There's still a little chance Naruto's collar is carrying the second camera, and every minute I spend trying to break it off is another minute a scientist could be realizing that I, a stupid experiment, had an intelligent motive and was doing something really, really frowned upon.

KWEKK! The collar came away with a sound I'd never heard before, and four big pieces fell at Naruto's feet, each one attached to the next by red and white wires. Naruto's tail wound around one section of wires and pulled the whole mess up to Naruto's hand. He grasped it and tossed all of it into the stream. A little spark shower rose up out of the water (it gave us both a quick, lovely memory of someone else who could make electricity) and it was gone.

We said nothing for a few minutes. We stood and basked in the fact that we were actually free from Chambers now. They couldn't shock us, had no control over us, had no idea that we had enough brains to hate them. We would find their Number 9 and capture her, but like hell we would bring her back to them and their white torture hall.

"Come on. I bet Itachi has found a way to get everybody else's collars off already." I said eventually. "So where's this spot where we meet everyone else?"

"Five miles away. Maybe six. Follow me, and for once, fishstick, run _fast!_"

Well, just because I happen to be the slowest runner didn't mean he had to exploit it every ten minutes! I followed anyway, saying nothing. He'd be wary anyway since he knew me well enough to know I've always been waiting for a moment to whack him upside the head for saying that. Consider it a dysfunctional family habit.

In a few days. Only a few days. _'We're coming for you, speed demon. Sit tight.' _

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Yet another cliffhanger. But I feel you got some good information in exchange from Anko's logbook: Not only did the males talk to each other when trying to "kill" each other in a white room, there where times when they thought they would mix things up and just sit down and talk...in animaltongue, of course. To the complete bafflement of the scientists who consistently thought the experiments were too dumb to properly socialize.

Please also wish me luck, as the inevitable "Sakura-meets-the-guys" chapter is coming up very soon, and I fear I will destroy the characters of those poor guys. I don't enjoy writing OOC if I can help it, every word I type and make them say is like a slap upside the head, saying, "That guy would SO not say that! Delete NOW!" I don't have much confidence on this upcoming disaster, but I will do my best. When you see the guys acting OOC when they talk to Sakura, _please _cut me some slack. I will do the best I can, and this issue is really eating at me.

Enjoy this chapter, wish me luck for the next one, and have a happy 2008.

Ta...Storm


	13. Thirteenth

**EDIT, September 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

Chapter the Thirteenth.

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January 13th, but if it's after midnight, then it would be the 14th…I don't really know, sorry. ...Sakura POV

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I can't believe it. It's right there. Less than a hundred feet below me. There's my deathbed, in Buffalo Jump form. I'd made it.

I'd taken a bag of chicken quesadillas from a couple of teenage boys all caught up in their iPods on the way here, and they were _damn _tasty, but that's completely off-track and the point is that I was here. Finally.

It was a cliff, just like I'd thought it would be, grassy on its top and rocky on the steep sides. I think I even saw a couple of skulls down at the bottom. Or maybe that's just white grass. I dunno, I should be able to see, but I'm not really looking. That little red plaque near the edge of the cliff, reading "Head Smashed-In Buffalo Jump" was what really told me I was here. Out in all this wilderness, my mind whirling as madly as it's been, it's possible I might have actually passed right over this place without that plaque glaring in the sun.

Now it was snowing again, harder than the light snowfall from yesterday, and it chilled me a little. I actually started and stopped shivering a couple times. This had started to whiten the cliff, and as I descended down, watchful for any people, I realized how lucky I was. Even if I wasn't mentally...stressed right now, I could have missed the plaque because of snow covering it. Lucky lucky.

I alighted on a rock just by the cliff edge, about the size of a small car. If I fell backward I'd fall down the cliff and, if I wasn't a winged creature, I might snap my neck below. But this was a nonsensical worry, and what was more important was the fact that, here on the edge of the place, I can't be ambushed. My enemies could not scale the wall below me and sneak up on me, and goodness knows they can't sneak up on me in the snow in front of me. They're not gophers. So here, I was comfortable. Except for this sharp bit of ice on the edge. Ow. You, go away. Okay, it snapped off.

Sitting down on this rock, I felt the snow cool my exhausted, warmed wings and pale the colors of the landscape. There was wind buffeting my face, and, for no reason at all, this reminded me of Zetsu. The plant. An organism that dies in the cold._ Dies in the cold. _

Oh my god. "He can't live in the cold," I gasped aloud, and I had to almost cover my mouth because the realization was so _obvious _and could benefit me so much. This cold weather is easy for me to take. I can stand in snow knee-deep in my shorts and and my tee and feel fine. But Zetsu...he must feel terrible. Even ill. That could be why he stayed in the ground almost the entire time when he and his friends pulled me down! Even the ground is a notch warmer than the open land. Does this apply to Sasori, too? I know that guy's so obsessed with sun and warmth that he's actually got a place to sun himself in his cell (talk about spoiled!). He must hate this weather, too. He must be...impaired by it. Did that mean he and Zetsu couldn't come up here, where the cold would only be worse and could kill them? Oh heck yes.

Oh my gosh oh my gosh this is so cool. I wonder if there's anybody else who can't come! Um...Kisame, being a fish, comes to mind, but there are plenty of types of fish living in the arctic and other such cold places, and I don't know where his bull shark DNA is indigenous to. Safe to assume he'll be here. Karin more than once spoke of how Neji enjoys cool temperatures. Naruto? The red fox? Red foxes can deal with winters. Even if he's not predisposed to the cold, his wild energy will fling him right up across the border easily. Freaking psycho.

Deidara was as convincingly emotional as I'd ever seen him when his friends attacked me in the clearing. He's too dead-set on finding me now...and he can smell me wherever I go. Jesus _Chri_-okay, moving on. Having listened to the way he talked to me, I have to believe he'll come. Itachi and Kakashi? Weasels and wolverines can take cold weather. Wolverines especially. And they are some of the most powerful individuals I've ever met. These two top my list of "who would work the hardest to find Sakura and rip her head off."

Who's left? Neji. He pinned me down. Hunting me eight out of his nine years, and he caught me. Why the hell _wouldn't _he come after me again? Yeah, he's a caracal, a desert animal but I don't feel the need to justify this any further.

Wait… I paused, giving a quick glance around and throwing out my senses, feeling for the presence of some other being. I sensed nothing more than your average field mice and things, running around in the grass to my left. No one's here yet. So I sat up (cleared more snow off of my rock) and stared at my bare feet. Bare like always, my entire life. I curled my toes. I had curled them in river mud once. Days ago. I was alone and smiling at that time. The world was happy and green and very good to me. There's a deep, ugly ache in me that's prophesying my death, and the things I'll never get to do again once I die.

That part of me is presently being run over by a mental Batmobile (Thank you, Hidan). Right now the best I can do is hope that Sasori and Zetsu will chicken out because of the cold that goes so dramatically against their natures. But I can't hope too much. I mean, my spirit will be so crushed if I tell myself I'll be facing six monsters and eight come to get me. I can't count my chickens before I hatch. Kakuzu said that saying was really stupid.

So. Maybe I should practice fighting and stuff while I'm here alone. Practice getting airborne quickly. Maybe I can finally find out what forces make my ability to make electricity work so fantastically, so...un-scientifically.

Also, there's the really important step called _do not fall asleep. _What would it be like to take a nap and see them all there waiting for me. That would be one of the most terrible maneuvers they could do. Waiting for me like that, only to be waiting with claws and teeth when I came to. Oh, God. Oh God, no sleeping. And that's fine. I can deal. I can.

I'll spend my time practicing for a few hours. Perhaps many. I'll wait for the hellhounds to come for me. I'm sitting here, you little bastards. I'm sitting...right here.

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January 13th, 10:33 AM ...Karin POV

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The subject I am pondering about at this moment, you may wonder, you pathetic little shit, (it's not like you have anything more pressing) is very, very huge. At least for us. It may not seem like much to you, but then again, you're not a scientist at a covert Chambers laboratory, are you? I thought not. Get back to struggling for your GED. I pay you to clean my floors, not think.

The good news, ahem, has to do with the car crash on Highway 5 near Portland. The local news stations and reporters had to be bribed or threatened with dirt on their chief director to avoid the real story. They knew, and told the public, that the driver of the moving truck had swerved to avoid a "pink girl" in the road and crashed into a tree, killing himself and injuring his three children.

Most of the story seen on a news channel would talk about the three kids, how the two oldest ones had covered the youngest with their bodies to save him from being crushed by furniture in the truck, and how they needed donations to be given homes since their father was an abusive drunk who'd been avoiding debt for years and other heartfelt things that supposedly tugged at your humanity like the animal shelter commercials. The reason the father swerved off the road in the first place was delightfully downplayed in favor of the heartbreak factor.

There were a lot of vital parts that the news stations didn't know, were never told, or were bribed to "forget about." One such part was that the driver, Tanaka Subaku, was a former employee of this corporation. He had been employed at a party store from one of the company's branches in a small Oregon town, about nine years ago. He'd been fired after drinking himself sick during his shift, something he did often. His more recent adventures included stealing a moving fan and hauling ass up to Vancouver to stay with a friend. Pssht. I refuse to believe this turd had a friend.

You're probably wondering how I found out all this about Mr. Subaku, or why in the hell anyone at Chambers cares. You want to know why? I pay you to listen, not guess, shithead, so shut your little mouth!

That loser's death may be a favor to society, but it's vital information to us, because he was Sakura's father.

While he worked at his gay little party store, an operative dispatched by Orochimaru himself was sent out to retrieve a DNA sample from a randomly-selected human. One one of Tanaka's "drinking breaks" said operative decided to choose this beacon of decency, and inject a needle into the shit's arm without him ever knowing his blood was taken. With a DNA liquifier and a goshawk embryo, and fertilized and nudged through growth with a process a dropout like you wouldn't understand. In some six months that grew into a winged infant human labeled Number 9. Most of the other experiments had been born the same way, but this one, oh, this one...

ANYHOW, it's a grand thing that Mr. Subaku's demise is being kept largely hidden. Sadly for us, many of the places he's worked at, and been fired from, have been Chambers stores and outlets, and we can't have anyone connecting him with us. God only knows where that could lead. I've been thinking nice, grateful things about how well we buried that mess for a while now... thoughts which have been inevitably leading back to Number 9. Fucking...

Damn, this has got me all brooding about the other experiment. Of course before I brood, I have to stop and glare at Choza. He's standing in the middle of the hall with a cart full of flu vaccine vials, fooling around with his cell phone like we were today's junior high school students. Jesus Christ in a bowl.

"Choza, get back to your station! I don't care what kind of phone you have unless you wanna show it off to Orochimaru!"

"Hayate just sent me a text telling me to come to the second floor. I was just telling him I'd be right there," he replied. Oh. Sending work-related texts. Damn, forgot that even happened. Feeling pretty damn foolish, I just nodded and kept walking. I could just feel that lardass rolling his eyes at me. Okay, now I can brood. I'm pretty sure I can keep walking up and down these few hallways. Usually, no one's up here, and with this whole "Aahh, Number 9 got away" business, there will be even fewer than usual.

I combed my fingers through my hair admiringly as I smiled and thought. So what should I brood about, now that I've got ten minutes to waste while my files from one laptop are transferring to another? Ooh, ooh, how about siblings? I love thinking about experiments' siblings. It...honestly, it sometimes arouses me to think I've torn families apart. I'm sure I'd be given some odd stares for saying such a thing aloud, but what's a girl to do? It's the truth, is all. I love to think about Number 3's little brother, a preteen boy living the awkward and segregated life of a Japanese person in Kansas City. And Number 5, so anxious to make his hair feminine and lovely, why, he'd just die to meet his elder sister...named Gino? Ino? Who cares. And her mother, a French woman who unknowingly gave me DNA for her mutated son-

"Karin! There you are! Could you come down to Med Room Two? Hayate and Genma seem to have caught something…half the employees are out searching in Salem, and the other half are already busy…so…"

Yuugao was the one who's rounded the corner right in front of my face, nearly scared me out of my pants and was now receiving the most hateful glare of her life. The purple-head had no idea that she was going to have her ass kicked out of this company once I took over Orochimaru's position. "Fine," I spat out. A little drip of saliva smacked onto her face and she deserved it.

Pathetic little Yuugao looked like she was about to apologize, but I stomped after her and made my way to the nearest elevator. (Can you guess what color it is? White! With silver trimming. Very sleek and modern. I just _love _the totally white coloring of this place. So modern yet so strong and suave and…and…gahh, you made me get off track your little brat!)

"Can I ask what you were doing wandering around up here?" Yuugao asked meekly, standing behind me so as to avoid my evil glaring at her. The elevator sure took its bloody time coming up here. "I mean...I'm just asking because you're usually the last person to wander about. I thought you might have been assigned something pressing and urgent and it needed finishing, so I waited as long as I could before coming up here…"

Well, at least she knows how to kiss ass. I like that.

"I was just thinking," I said truthfully. I wished I could think up a lie to tell the fish-brained bitch. My specialties range from genetics to biochemistry, but creativity is...um, a long shot for me.

"It was actually Kabuto's idea to come and get you." Yuugao admitted, making some kind of scratching sound behind me. At _last _the elevator came up and opened its twin doors. We walked in together. "He has so many duties…I can't grasp how he takes care of them all. He happened to be in the surveillance room while you were up here, and saw you walking around. He told me to come get you and help out with Hayate and Genma."

My eyes went fearfully wide. The elevator doors were closing, and Yuugao wasn't looking at me, for fear of finding some kind of hatred there. But in the little crack between the elevator doors, right before they closed, I spotted the shiny, white, black-lens camera hanging from the white ceiling. One of the hundreds of surveillance cameras, all throughout the laboratory. Kabuto, who took on the duties of both scientist and security chief. After a He could go into the surveillance room whenever he wanted and look into any room he pleased. He got paid to do it.

And through that little, single camera, I swear I could see the bespectacled bastard staring at me, waving at me. Mocking me. Maybe making that...that Spock hand symbol. And then the doors closed and were slowly transferring us to a lower floor.

_'Fuck that little nerd bastard.' _

I hated Kabuto more than anyone else in the world.

If only I could shoot him. Just once. If I could shoot the guy, beat him with a club, punch his teeth out, push him into a radioactive lake…if I could just spite the guy in some way, once, and get away with it, my life would be so much merrier. If I could train the experiments to kill Kabuto, and get away with it, I _so _would. I would watch that and get off on it.

Neither of us said anything until we reached the second floor. The halls were half-empty due to, as Yuugao said, half of our employees being out and searching the Salem area for clues as to the experiments' whereabouts. We heard a report about Number 7 being seen around the southern edge of town. A teenage employee of a Chambers store there, "BarkMeowTweet," a pet store, told his boss about a tall man with sickly, bluish skin sneaking around a dumpster nearby. The boss happened to be a fellow who knows about us secret laboratories that Chambers feeds money to behind closed doors, so thank God for that. It would have been a hassle if he were a regular fellow who thought six-foot-three men with gills were worth calling 911 over.

My cell phone started ringing just before Yuugao and I entered Med Checking Room Two. My hand was inches from the knob, when _Ring-ring__. Ring-a-ling, ring, ring-ring__. _Okay, so my phone plays a cute little ringing tune and not a professional buzz, you got a problem with me having a little fun with my phone? Let a girl have her simple pleasures.

I flipped open the silver top and held it to my ear. I was cheerily greeted with: _"Kar-RIN! I need you up in the Surveillance Room right the hell now!" _

"What?" I spat angrily at Ibiki's distinguishably rough voice. "I'm needed to help Gekko and Shiranui. They've caught some kind of virus or cold and—"

_"Get someone else to do it!"_ Ibiki cried. That bald bastard actually sounded…well, damn. Scared of something. I almost said this, but before I could he screamed into the phone again, loud enough for Yuugao to hear, _"The male experiments' collars are coming off! First Kisame's, then Naruto's__, then all of them! Something is taking off their shock collars!"_

I don't even remember running up two flights of stairs to the Surveillance Room. Next thing I knew, I was inserting the red card into the scanner and typing in the seven-digit code. The door slid open and I rushed in. The room was dark and windowless as usual, and dozens of silver, clear screens covered one wall, at the bottom of which stood a small metal control panel covered in dials and buttons and levers, all of which Kabuto operated. Kabuto sat in front of said control panel, staring at the laptop in his lap and ignoring all the other screens. Ibiki was leaning precariously over his shoulder, eyes wide and cellphone clenched hard.

I sped over to them and looked at Kabuto's laptop screen before either of them could say anything. There were eight different windows open, all video-playing programs, and all showed nothing but blaring, snowy static.

My first slammed onto Kabuto's shoulder like a hammer, and I barked "How?" at him like a dog, and was shivering, but he didn't even flinch.

"I have no idea…if there was some mechanical problem I would have received the signal saying so. But if it happened like this...they've been broken off completely. Broken into pieces."

"Could Sakura have attacked them?" Ibiki said, looking at me. I squinted, about to tell him something along the lines of "No way in hell," but with more intelligent words. The fucking baldy interrupted me.

"Their collars have an electricity-resistant synthetic shell just to defend against her short-circuiting them. But—but she's goddamned full of muscle, and she could pull them off the males' necks. She tore off her own collar, which could have resisted all the weight of...geez, what, a small car? She tore off her own collar, so she would surely have a chance with these."

"Why in the hell would she attack them?" I burst out, glaring. "She's made it clear that she never wants to see them again!"

"I'm just stating a possibility, Karin," Ibiki defended, and I realized I was seeming quite bitchy at that moment. "After everything that's happened, you want to avoid any possibility that has a one percent chance?" And he was right.

"Well, they may have just been shot!" I exclaimed. And I slammed my hand angrily down onto Kabuto's shoulder again. He didn't seem to have eyes or ears for anything but the static screens. "Someone may have shot them, thinking they were wild animals or just plain old mutants. I know a guy online who believes in that."

"All eight of them within a few minutes, all at the perfect weak spot in the collars? Well, this guy's a great shot. And possibly invisible, too, since he'd be dead after he shot the gun once if they could find him." Ibiki chewing us out was extremely unneeded, and I could have slapped the bald geezer. But I was thinking of something else: the near-invisible latch at the near-left side of each collar. Once the latch was lifed, the heart rate monitor, electricity producer and a half dozen other mechanisms were exposed. Included the lock. But they could not have unlocked each latch, and especially not almost all in sync.

"What if they took them off themselves?" Kabuto offered slowly, almost drowsily. Kisame may have been able to, but he's…he's…

I scoffed at this. "I admit I was a bit floored the first time Kisame figured out how to brush his own teeth. But none of the males are smart enough to break off their own collars, or comprehend the desire to even do so. If they somehow did, even the weak point has its defense and—and why are we talking about this? We should send out some parties to find out what the hell happened!"

"Good idea." Ibiki grinned, much too happily. "Now, let's just pinpoint their locations with the tracking devices _in their collars." _

Oh. Well. ...Well.

"A real idea." Ibiki snapped. "What options do we have, really? Their locations are unknown, and we're stretched for employees here as it is. Half the employees are in Salem, and we can't afford to let anyone else go. The nearest Chambers employee who knows about these labs, who could actually do us some good, has taken all their workers to Moscow for the week. And the nearest lab who could lend us a hand is in Miami but lord knows they've never been the most efficient people on the planet anyway."

Way to remind us how bad it is, champ. Go kick an Afghan child next. "We have to tell Orochimaru." Kabuto rasped with a rough voice that suggested he needed to cough. "He'll think of something."

Kabuto is admitting he can't think of anything? That he needs Orochimaru's help? I almost feel giddy. Once this whole escape business is over and done with (and we've given the little troublemaker Number 9 a little life-changing experience) I'd love to use that against Kabuto. "Oh, Orochimaru, sir, Kabuto couldn't keep his mind collected during a particularly tough situation! His first idea was to come straight to you and ask for help, and I must say that's rather…disappointing…for him. He's such a bright man and…" Oh, oh, oh _yes, _I could see this going to my advantage. I had almost forgotten that I hadn't yet come up with a better idea.

"I'll tell him right now." I said immediately, my eyes widening. "You two stay here, see if the cameras come back online. This may be a big mechanism malfunction that we hadn't predicted, for all we know." The truth was, I wanted to go to the Director, Orochimaru's, office and hope to god that on my slow, slow walk there, I would come up with something. Something that would show how I kept calm and alert in the face of trouble, and Kabuto went crawling to his boss first thing.

I opened the door with a quick code—3-5-8-5-9-6-4—and speed-walked down the hall. Once I knew I was out of range of their hearing and sight, I slowed considerably. I needed time. Time to think of something, anything, that would help me in my secret little battle against Kabuto. Something that would keep the Director from throwing a furious tantrum and breaking my arm.

I knew if I didn't come up with something within the next three or so minutes I was going to be coming out that second-floor office with an injury.

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January 13th, 8:50 PM ...Hiashi POV

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I came to the hospital this fine night to get my ripped hand treated. The color-man (so he'd been dubbed, since officers with me at the time had said he was yellow, black and blue) had used some kind of weapon to slash open the skin, while I was up investigating the crash scene about two days ago. He did it while jumping over me and the entire highway, but I'm here only to take care of the injury and not the insane circumstance.

It had seemed alright once I got a few bandages on it, but I found later on that moving it would cause it to bleed…constantly. I'm not joking here; this cut didn't stop bleeding for four hours. Constant tissues and bandages and gauze needed to be applied. Yura was a very helpful fellow in that, changing the dressing even when I was getting my well-deserved, twelve-hour nap. I think now's about the time to throw in the towel and admit I can't stop this myself. I suppose the doctor will know what to do.

So here I was, in the waiting room, waiting on Yura to come from Room 243 with my prescription from Dr. Maximilian. I'd been sitting here on this generic couch, staring out the large windows into the courtyard, for about ten minutes now, glancing every once in a while at the television hanging from a huge black hook on the wall. A mother and her son, both black-haired, both looked quite tired, were sitting on a green couch opposite me, watching some children's cartoon about talking animals at a summer camp.

I was alerted by the sound of a wheelchair coming my way from down the hall. I opened my eyes and looked down the nearest hallway and saw a brunette boy, perhaps sixteen, casts on both legs, wheeling his way down the hall with impatience scratched all over his face…along with a...maybe a popular new arrangement of striped, purple makeup. He had something little and black in his lap, maybe a hat, and his clothes were an average pair of jeans a colored T-shirt. Most importantly, he'd just come out of ICU, where very few patients were residing presently except for a notable and recently famous few. A certain trio of people that he might have seen in there.

The investigative police officer within me implored me to sit up and look the boy in the eye questioningly. He ignored me in favor of the summer camp TV show, with his head propped on his open palm.

Again, without thinking, and talking a bit quietly so as not to disturb the mother and son, I asked him, "Do you know the three siblings who were in the car crash out on—"

"That's me," he interrupted. "Me, my little brother and my big sister. If you're from the press, we already sold the story to CNN nightly news. If you want the story, go watch the news."

Well...Well, naturally he'd be surrounded by reporters because of this event. And naturally, he'd resent their attempting to leech off of his suffering. "I'm from the local police," I said, almost apologetically. I flipped out my wallet from my left pocket. He glanced at the badge inside it, was satisfied, and looked away. "I'm trying to find out what exactly made your father swerve and hit that tree.

The kid turned his dark eyes toward me again and was all hostility. "Do you watch TV or not?" he asked flatly. "My dad said that there was 'a pink girl in the road," and that's what they'll tell you on any news channel or blog that's not retarded. No, I don't know anything else. He said that before I woke up, and when I did wake up and ask where he was, they told me he'd died already. Blood loss and brain damage, hemorrhage, jaundice. End."

"Yes, I know what the news is saying. But I'm trying to find the girl who was standing in the road," I explained. i could only hope he believed my sincerity. "We found a feather just near the crash site, a down feather of a hawk. Northern goshawk, I think. We think she was a trained falconer, or has a very obedient pet bird at the least. Either way, we can draw up lists of people who've purchased hawks off of breeders or poachers, or those with registered falconry licenses. My partner can-"

"What the hell does it matter if she's a falconer or a criminal or anything?" the boy asked. His eyes were still glued up to the TV. "She could have been a regular person. Maybe hitchhiking on the highway, or drunk or just lost. Does it matter?"

His father is dead and it doesn't matter. What a life he must have had to be able to think that. I nodded. "It does. If it was a criminal, then that's all the reason we need to start another investigation on that person, and bring them to justice. If it's like you say and it was just a regular person…well, I just don't think it was."

He grunted, but he still stared indifferently at the television.

The kid was being a stereotypical angry, unmoveable teenager, but I wouldn't play into the adult's typical role here. "Look, it can't be a regular person. I know. When I picked up the feather, someone jumped out of the woods and grabbed it right out of my hand. Right before we tried to chase him down, he dashed past me, and this happened."

I opened my palm wide, showing the bandages already spotted with three red and dripping dots. His black eyes finally moved from the TV and looked down. Something in his eyes flickered, like he'd just remembered something very important, but it was gone as soon as it had come. I had to keep going. No matter how nuts I sounded. "I haven't told this to anyone…not even my partner. I swear the person who did this the me grabbed the feather had claws, because his hand tore four or five long lines in my hand, and more notably…I could have sworn he had wings."

The boy's head snapped up, and the flickering emotion I had seen was now burning visibly. He seemed to already know what I was talking about. "You're serious." he said, but I knew it was a question. I nodded.

"My partner thinks he had a dagger or something and used that to tear the feather away from me, but I know what I saw. I saw claws, I saw blonde hair, and I saw wings. Blue wings, like a parrot or heron."

His head shook a bit, like it was trying to decide whether to look at me, my hand or the TV or just out into space. "I….I think I may know what you're talking about." I gasped. The boy watching the show suddenly turned to glare at us, and then his especially disapproving mother.

I said, more quietly, "What do you mean?"

"Swear you won't tell. Not a soul.. My head's already screwed enough and I don't need people saying I was having hallucinations or going insane on top of everything else." I nodded, quickly. He leaned towards me over the armrest of his wheelchair and whispered a story in my ear about a man with a cat's tail and cat ears growing out of his hair at the top of his head, how this man assaulted him, talked to him, and then escaped.

He paused, letting this piece of his tale sink in. He sighed, looked away, probably feeling embarrassed to be telling such a story. But he went on. "My sister came out then and took me back inside…" and he pointed to the window, out to the lovely courtyard, surrounding on four sides by the hospital, a structure like a square with a hole in the middle. The cat-man had jumped up four stories and landed on the roof? Really?

"Why didn't you tell this to anyone? You could have helped the investigation!" I exclaimed.

The kid looked angry then. "Who could I tell, my doctors? Can you imagine how crazy they'd think I am? How many schizo pills they'd make me take? I won't tell anyone, and I'm just fine with that."

"But why?_" _I asked, exasperated.

"That man-_creature_ knew who caused the fuckin' car wreck, that's why!" he whispered urgently. "He was dangerous and he knew the girl who caused the wreck and she must be dangerous, too, and the last thing me and my siblings need is some more danger!" The last part of the speech was spat out, textbook angry and defensive.

He leaned his head back over the rim of his chair and closed his eyes. "But you apparently met a similar mutant person. Mine was a cat-guy, yours was a parrot-guy and maybe the girl was another parrot-person. They could be connected, you know? Shouldn't you go find out, Officer?" The last bit was sarcasm, but I had taken worse verbal bites from angry drunks. I smiled.

"Perfectly reasonable," I said. "You don't need to worry about anything. You and your siblings will be fine once you get out of the hospital. You'll get a foster home—yes, together—and everything. Taking care of those three is going to be completely my problem."

The teen laughed, showed teeth that were just a shade or two off of white. He said, "Yeah. Yeah. You, just, uh, keep my hallucination there quiet, okay, man?"

"Sure, I promise." I smiled at him, and for the first time he smiled back. "But I need to talk to you again sometime. Get the details straightened out. I won't tell anyone about what we know, it'll all be confidential. The investigation of these three animal-folks will be a job for me only. No one will ever know I'm watching for signs of them acting up again."

He nodded his agreement, then looked behind me, likely at a clock. "Dammit," he murmured. "Julian told me to me to be back in my room at 8:45. I gotta go. Come back tomorrow, sometime around lunch. I'm usually not being covered in nurses and medicine around then." He started to wheel himself backwards, back into the hallway. He turned around so that his chair was now facing forward and began going back the way he'd come, and I got up just in time to ask him a vital question.

"Sorry, sorry. I did watch the news story, lots of times, but I can't remember your name." I explained.

"Kankurou Subaku," he called over his shoulder, and moved farther down the hall and out of my sight.

Yura chose that moment, naturally, to come out of Dr. Maximilian's office with a little orange bottle in hand. He shook hands with a pudgy man in his forties, and walked over to me. "Finally got it. He was listing off symptoms like no tomorrow and I had to ask questions about all of them. Anyway, here's your first pill, sir. Say hello to the road to recovery."

I took the thing gratefully, nodded at Yura with appreciation—he loves to be appreciated—and downed the pill. Tomorrow around lunchtime Kankurou and I would get the details of this…what should I call it? Er, this "animal persons" business set in stone.

If it _was _another parrot-person who caused Kankurou's wreck…well, I'm not exactly sure what I'll do then, but I know I'll think of something. Eventually.

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January 15th, probably 7 or 8:00 in the evening…But I'm just judging by the amount of light,so my guess probably isn't that accurate. ...Sakura POV

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To think, I actually fell asleep. Right on this rock that I landed on when I came to Buffalo Jump. Yeah. The night I came, the night of the thirteenth or really early in the morning of the fourteenth, I swore I wouldn't sleep for fear of waking up with a male experiment in my face, claws and fangs and other such things outstretched and dangerous and me sleeping unawares. I fell asleep at sunrise, thinking that my rock here was feeling quite warm with the cloudless sky and the sunlight, and just fell asleep, till sunset. Just like that.

My last thought that I can remember went something like, _'This rock sure feels better than my metal crate...mmmh…'_ And I drifted off. In the most vulnerable location ever. Not to mention I slept eight hours without pause.

Can't. Freaking. Believe it. _  
_

And I woke up just a little before twilight. The sun was still in the sky, just an inch of sky separated the sun and the horizon. It was blazing red and orange and violet, blending like it was the canvas of God—oh, it was gorgeous. That was the first thing I noticed as I woke up, unset-ish-time in January. I blinked a bit and put my hand in front of my mouth politely as I yawned, then rubbed my left eye.

And then I leaped into the air.

Because I had sensed, felt, a male experiment. Itachi.

I had been sleeping, and he had been _sitting_ _next to me._

Oh god oh god oh god no. I had my wings three-quarters unfurled and was perhaps six feet into the air when a hand, a clawed hand, wrapped around my skinny ankle. I was pulled back down to earth. I hit the wrong again painfully. I stumbled on it, trying to find my footing as I wrestled about practically on my knees. All I did was fall flat on my butt, still next to Itachi.

What a stupid, un-pitiable way to die. What a terrible way. My eyes went wide of their own accord, like they had their own minds with which to be terrified. I started shivering. With effort borne of fear, I made myself tense as steel wire, ready to move at the lightest and littlest movement, and I kept my eyes trained on my left fist. that fist was as far down as my eyes could look without actually closing. And around me, too scared to really look, I heard the breaths of four other experiments. Possibly more. Being able to count them, even vaguely, brought a thread of logic and sense back to me. I clung to it. I took a long, smooth breath, then turned my eyes to them, looking as brave and un-intimidated as I possibly could. I don't know how well this worked, since I'm sure I was still shaking.

And there they were. All the male experiments—excluding Zetsu; where's he at?—had made themselves comfortable sitting on my rock on the edge of the cliff, or standing around it. Itachi and Naruto were sitting around me on the rock; Neji was on his knees in the grass nearest me; all others stood. They were all here, all dressed in frighteningly black and red and grey clothes like usual, long pants and coats that the scientists gave them, that made them seem all the more evil. And they were all staring at me. I hoped to God, if he was really there, that my wings weren't wilting in fear, and that they'll bloom again in a way that's not showered with bird blood.

_My nightmare was here. _

Fake fearlessness filled my voice. Hopefully it convinced them. "All right, I'm right where you asked me to come." I said, sweeping my best 'fearless' green gaze over them all. They all had the same mild, lazy look of someone who was beginning to feel sleepy. Or is this the gaze of a hungry predator about to tear apart some deathly frightened prey? I'll know soon enough. "What do you want?"

They didn't answer immediately. I could feel it—just feel it—that they were waiting for the right moment to unsuspectingly smash their fists into my gut and rip out whatever organs they could touch. I knew I was shivering visibly now; god, I couldn't stop. Why wouldn't they just move, do something, anything? Do they know what torture they're inflicting on me with this silence?

Finally Kisame spoke. Strangely, he looked more alert and awake than the rest. "We want you to come with us," he said.

Well, that was quite blunt, I couldn't help but think. I thought that offering my own bluntness would serve some purpose, so I said, "What in the world makes you think I'll help you with anything?" And then I felt Itachi's fingers—god, those claws!—drumming on my ankle. He hadn't let go since he'd pulled me down a minute ago. And it didn't look like he planned to anytime soon. I'm not sure, though. I still couldn't look Itachi in the eyes. No, I wasn't that brave. I wasn't that foolish.

"We want the same thing you do." came Naruto's voice. I didn't turn my head, but my eyes moved swiftly to stare at the fox-boy, with his extra, orange fox-ears and his tail that always swished around in the air. "Chambers has to die. Not just the lab we came from. Every lab, every place, the whole company. We can destroy it. We want you to help us."

And I said the very first thing that came to mind, four seconds later, after my brain was able to take in that information. "…What?"

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Yeah, more of Judgment Day will take place next chapter. I actually wrote about three more paragraphs after Sakura's "what?" but I decided that was _the _perfect place to stop. I want to post this now, before I get too caught up in Bleach and HitsuRuki to update this for awhile. Airborne and its fans have waited too long, and they all deserve _something_, so here it is.

So now you know the male experiments' grand plan. Not only do they want Sakura with them in their little group because they like her (Uh…reason for that coming up next chapter…) but because they want her help to destroy Chambers. Because with her assisting them, surely they can conquer the hell that's tortured them since birth. And along the way, the males, and you, the reader, I presume, are sure the speed demon will grow on them and friendships and fluffy bonds will form. So it shall be.

Even this vague piece of "Judgment Day," where very few male experiments talk, was hard for me. I kept stopping and wondering if I could retype what a male just said to make it seem more in-character. I gotta get over this, damn it.

Also it makes me LOL that Karin always talks directly to _you _when she talks and insists you are a high school dropout piece of crap, etc, and has no boundaries and cares not who she offends and how. What else is new?

Ta…Storm


	14. Fourteenth

**EDIT, September 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

Along with Shippuden and the occasional Rurouni Kenshin, I've been loving my share of cartoons recently. I found delightful and nostalgic episodes of Ed, Edd n' Eddy on Youtube recently. It greatly compliments my (possibly pirated) Courage the Cowardly Dog DVD set. c:

Behold the second part of Judgment Day!

Oh, because Zetsu's POV (the first section) is going to be confusing, I'll put in this little reference key to help you understand which "side" of him is talking and when and how to distinguish it from his thoughts.

Polysynthetic White side telling story

_Polysynthetic _Black side telling story. (Will often be accompanied by good-natured cursing)

"Polysynthetic." White side talking

"_Polysynthetic." _Black side talking (Will often be accompanied by good-natured cursing)

'_Polysynthetic.' _White side thinking.

Black side does not think very much, but telepathically listens to white side thinking.

Chapter the Fourteenth.

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January 14th, perhaps 7:45 at night ...Zetsu POV

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How to begin? How to begin? Perhaps at the worst point of the story, when I was traveling with my seven companions and almost died of frostbite? Or perhaps the part where Sasori became so cold in the night that when Deidara woke up he found the scorpion had stopped breathing? Or how Sasori had to be pushed and clawed and slapped until he woke up? Or that he almost didn't?

_Maybe you'd like to hear more about _that. _More details about how Sasori almost died in his sleep because the weather in this country is so damned cold and he can barely stay alive through it._

Not now.

Moping can be for later. I could mope when I was sitting alone in someplace more appropriate. But not now, when I'm watching a lifelong dream coming true.

Our speed demon is here with us. We are together, and Naruto's just told her exactly what we plan to do.

"What?" Is the first thing she said, of course. It was unexpected, and hell, that was my reaction, too, when Kakashi first told it to me so many months ago in one of our fights in a white Chambers room. Despite how terribly frightened and unnerved she seemed, I can't stop smiling. But no one can see me, so it doesn't matter.

I'm merged with the earth. I'm underground, watching the scene a few inches above my head. It is a little less freezing underground, and by staying here frequently I can conserve my body temperature pills. Best of all, I have a wonderful view of Sakura. _God she's beautiful._ Oh, really? I'd forgotten, thank you.

But I could admire her all I wanted later. After this, we'd go southwest together, back to the laboratory where we were born. If our efforts are combined, that building can be burnt to the ground within days, and it will be the first of many. And we needed her help, her power and spirit that I often mused was like an endless fire, to do this. And after we all destroyed that hell—did the world a favor—then I would admire little Sakura all I wanted to. And perhaps a few times before the Chambers lab was destroyed, too.

_Fuck. We missed what Itachi was saying, you scatterbrained fool!_ I tried to catch up to his words. "—and the headquarters in Sydney from there."

Was that an amused smile playing on her lips? It's charming. It warms me. "You're very confident in being able to do the impossible." she said. "How exactly are you planning to get across the ocean?"

"I'd swim. No challenge for me." Kisame chuckled, good-humored as always. "Everyone else would have to stow away on a ship."

She was still hiding her fear, and not doing the best job in the world. Her hands are shaking, her wings—fine things they are—are slightly vibrating, if you look. I wonder what it feels like, to know her "nightmares" are surrounding her. It might be better for me to stay underground. She turned her eyes to Deidara, who was standing a few feet to her right. Like the rest of us, he's standing straight, not slouching, but has tired eyes and slow, exhausted breathing. We've been running for nonstop hours to get here, after all.

"…And would you fly? To the laboratory in Sydney?" I turned my earth-hidden body to look at him, and I think the dirt around me shifted a little when I did.

Deidara blinked and looked at the ground absently. Ashamedly, he replied, "No, I'm, uh…I'm afraid of heights."

_And there it is. _

I looked over at Sakura to gauge her reaction. For me, her eyes betray the gist of her thoughts, and they were a little darker now, which meant she was deep in contemplation. I had started keeping track of such things during the times when we were in the same medical room, or in a white room for playing. Then again, I misread her entire mindset for years. Do I really know what her eyes are saying?

More importantly, What does she think of this? This is Deidara's most humiliating secret, and he's told it to her, just like that.

She stared at him for a few seconds, and Deidara, looking almost _shy, _looked back up at her. Her silvery left wingtip twitched. Apparently not comfortable with just the cold, howling wind reacting to his secret, he said, "Unless you all want to stand here and get frozen, _again,_ we should leave, mm."

"I didn't agree to anything, Deidara." And everyone, _and me, too, _adjusted ourselves and stirred, and felt something sweet burning within us, because she'd never called any of us by name before. "You should know I'm still planning to jump into the sky the moment Itachi loosens his grip."

She looked resentfully at Itachi's clawed hand around her ankle, avoiding his eyes like always. He looked disappointed. "I'll let go when you come to your senses. You're throwing away a chance to burn that place of damnation to the ground. We're the only ones who can," his eyes narrowed. They were soft, not threatening. Sakura did not see them. "I know how much you hate them. Want them all to rot."

She rested an arm casually on her knee and looked down at the rock she sat on. Avoiding Itachi's eyes in any obvious way she could, even as he spoke again. "Whatever you think of us, you must know that we hated it as much as you did. We were put through tests just like you. I had my tonsils torn from me throat while I was awake. I watched them drill through my bones, and I once starved for two weeks. I was frantic and mindless at that time. As much an animal as I ever would be, I think. My animal mind assured me that cutting my arm open and sucking my own blood would give me sustenance."

Neji made an uncomfortable growling sound and turned his head. His ears swiveled to the side a bit. And I, I cringed and was silent in the ground. Itachi had never shared such a story with us. I never knew he had been driven to.._.to that._

"Even when they leave us be, they are making us dance with their puppet strings. They controlled everything. Even my age. I am fourteen years old, Sakura, and I should not look as old as I do. It bothers me." I stirred in the ground again, just the same as the others. Itachi had neither mentioned that, either. But he was right. None of us should look as old as we do. And far in the future, we may not be grateful to look exactly as we do now. To not age anymore. Itachi continued. A speech, this was. "I _will _kill them for ruining me. I won't stick needles into their eyes, Sakura, but I will drive my thumbs through their eyes and listen to them cry as the world turns red for them. I will leave them blind and hurting. Starving. And then I shall drown them. That is a fantasy I've entertained for all my fourteen years. You, only nine, must have similar ideas with such a mind as yours. You must. Don't you dare pretend that you don't want them all to die."

"Of course I do." she said menacingly. Her small fist was clenched. I ached to hold it. "I also don't want to die. I want a life I can enjoy and control. I would think that's what you want, too. And places like this," she paused to move her bright green gaze between Kisame and Kakashi, down the cliff to a snow-covered field, "harsh environments where their technology can't reach, are just the right choice for a new home. I'm sure even monsters like you," and she stared stonily at Sasori and Naruto, who were nearest in her field of vision, "could find a far-off place like this to live your own peaceful life. The world is vast, vast enough to avoid Chambers for years and years. Why won't you just find a place to live your own life? You obviously have the mobility, and apparently the desire to leave."

"Because they'll never stop looking for us." Kakashi put in. "Our lab is the only one of eleven to have successful experiments like us. Creatures that can walk and talk and function. Even if we were limp and brain-dead failures, they would hunt and burn our corpses to hide any evidence that Chambers is in the genetic mutation business. But we're all infinitely better than that. For experiments like us, they'll scan the globe a hundred times. No place will ever be safe for long."

"Then they can die looking for us," Sakura replied. Her eyes flared at him. "I'll move to a new home every day. Every hour. I'll adapt to anything they send toward me. I would much rather do that than throw away my life doing something so impossible. You shouldn't either. No one should." I clung to the imaginary implication that she wanted us not to die or hurt ourselves. The contrast in my thoughts and the reality was immense.

"I actually wouldn't mind dying that way." Naruto smirked, cupping his chin in his palm, looking quite smug despite how sick and cold I know he must be feeling. "As long as I take Kabuto or Karin with me, maybe with my claws through their throats…I'd be happy to die like that."

There wasn't one among us who wanted Karin dead. She was the scientist who most enjoyed others in pain, got some fierce emotional or even sexual pleasure by hearing screams and seeing tears fall. Sakura may just have despised her the most. She cracked a little grin at Naruto's comment. We all followed. If Sakura smiled, so did we _and so it always shall be. _

_That's changed her mind. I know it has. I see it in her eyes. She's decided already, just thinking of Karin dead. It's enough for us, definitely. It's enough for her, too. She's going to say she'll come with us. I fucking know it. _

My other half was right.

While she was smiling, her eyes flashed with the same grand intelligence that had helped her escape the lab, and I knew in that moment she'd analyzed a hundred different things at once (so I thought with my old knowledge that I could read her eyes). "That's definitely a worthwhile reward." she said softly, half-smiling now at the rock on which she sat. To get a better view, I moved my form from the ground near the rock into the rock itself, closer to her.

"I'll go with you." Sakura said. "Karin dead on the ground...and..." She paused; her fingers that were lightly poking each other laced angrily together and pressed onto each other. I think Itachi's omnipresent hand on her made her frustrated. "Forcing me to the ground and then baiting me with the best reward. You rats. I...I will help you kill Karin and Kabuto, and Orochimaru." Now she glared at Neji and Kakashi. "But that'll be it. I want those three dead. You can destroy the building yourself. You can destroy all the other labs yourself. When those three are dead, I'm leaving for the coldest, northernmost point of Siberia, and like hell you'll _ever_ find me again."

I chuckled a little. She'd just sealed her fate, just the way we'd planned it for her. I purred.

It must have been a powerful purr indeed; I guess it vibrated right through the rock. Her eyes went wide all of a sudden, and flicked down to a spot in the rock not far from where my body was hidden. _About goddamned time I came out anyway. Sitting in one spot underground for so long is tiring! _So I came up out of the rock, closed, slowly-opening flytrap first.

I admit that the scene of this giant plant-object coming out of the ground right in your face is unnerving. Even Sasori expresses some discomfort when I come up out of the ground this it's not as though I could blame her for almost not breathing when I opened my flytrap and showed my face and head and shoulders to her. The bottom half of the flytrap was enclosed in a long, black cloak and my humanoid body, inside it, had only a maroon undershirt. I wonder how frightening I looked. Good thing I'd had something planned to say just for this, even if it was very blunt and short. It would have been odd to appear like that and have to deal with some uncomfortable silence afterward. So my sinister side, my black half, said, _"It's too cold up here. Let's leave, now, it's only going to get worse! Don't stare, little one, it's rude." _

And I sunk back into the rock. I could practically feel Naruto and Kakashi trying not to grin.

Because we really expected her to...throw lightning at us when called such a name. Our guesses had been sketchy in previous years, but recently we assumed Sakura would not enjoy our pet names for her. We would not halt the use of it simply because she didn't like it, though. Little one was her name for us and it had been for a long time.

It was only reasonable that her straight, perfect gaze followed me as I sunk back into the ground. Surely there would have been some lightning strikes by now, or a change in her expression, or maybe just a twitch or…some change. But she seemed frozen. That is not what we had predicted she would do when we told her her name among us.

Kisame was the one to start the journey back, with his single, backward step. First he stood and yawned, though. He looked as though he were waking from a pleasant nap, and started walking in the direction of our white hell, along the edge of the Buffalo Jump cliff. It made me think briefly of the map I had in my cloak pocket, which had saved us days of what could have been very fooling countryside wandering. We would now use it to find our way back there.

Sasori glanced at Sakura admiringly, then at Deidara, with a dismissive "hurry up" sort of look, and followed Kisame. There was a pause while everyone else waited for some signal for everyone else to move along. Though people were leaving, Kakashi, the usual "leader," hadn't said anything yet. Before he could, though, Itachi said bluntly, "I'm afraid you'll have to show you're trustworthy enough not to be expected to fly off."

Sakura blinked a few times, probably a bit annoyed that he'd remembered that. _I wondered what she would do. I can name on one hand the things that will assure Itachi of anything. She was __tapping her fingers on the rock, and I was reminded again of how fucking _cold _that rock was, how fucking cold this whole country was. Then she made a sighing sort of sound and fisted her left hand, looking distressed. You know what she did next? Gods above, Itachi and all of us waiting years for...for this moment right the fuck here.  
_

_She turned her head up and looked Itachi in the eyes. _

_Everyone just fucking stopped whatever shit they were doing and stared at them. Friends and lifelong brothers or not, even Kisame had a little habit of avoiding eye contact with Itachi. And the angel here has avoided eye contact with him all her life. She had never seen his eyes. Here was something that none of us would forget for a long time._

_Itachi had the most blatant look of surprise and disbelief in his blood-red eyes. It was a glowing neon sign compared to his usual manner and expression. Sakura had, with one look, floored him and changed something which he had taken for granted his entire life. She held that stare, nonchalant like this was no big deal to her when it quite obviously _was, _and then Itachi __loosened his grip. Sakura moved her ankle fully out of his grasp fluidly and briskly before sliding off the rock and walking off. _

_And that was more than enough. _

_No one did anything but favorably watch her while she took a running start past Kisame—who missed the event since he left a few seconds too early, poor bastard—and jumped. She must have gone about five feet into the air before unfolding her silvery wings and taking off. Kisame looked back at us, looking alarmed and unsure, but saw our expressions of "it's quite allright" and chilled out. _

_So, still feeling tired as hell, we followed her on the ground, heading southwest back towards that one place aboveground that could possibly be called hell. _

As nine, with our kind of determination—_and hate!—_it's going to be one hell of a trip.

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January 15th, 10:30 AM ...Kakuzu POV

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My cousin is such a goddamned motormouth I wish I could inject myself with something so I'd be knocked flat unconscious. He also _lives _with me, so my amount of breaks from his blathering is small, college eats up a significant portion of my day, I'm making most of the payments for the house I share with Hidan, my alarm clock is some old piece of shit that _trumpets _to wake me up, every damn item at the grocery store is overpriced...the entire world looks menacing and full of shit when Hidan is around. But he hadn't bothered me last week. Or he hardly had. No, only one thing bothered me now. Disturbed me. Scared me.

The half-bird girl I met last week just fucking _left. _

This girl was Sakura, who accidentally impaled herself on the apple tree in our front yard, who announced to me that she was a mutant, and that her creators were the corporate business that's bigger than Wal-mart, whose hair is fucking _pink, _who saved us from getting our throats slit by four other half-animal freaks.

She said she'd come back as soon as she could. It had been three days. Me and Hidan were quiet, and without words, we were sharing the thought that she had been killed. We thought that the entire night we stayed at Shikamaru's, the night she left. So in the morning, around ten, the three of us all went home to see if Sakura was there waiting for us with the dead trophies of the four monsters that had attacked us.

Our house was completely normal, excluding the broken window in the back of the kitchen that one of the mutant man had knocked out with a rock he threw. Sakura wasn't there right now; no one was. There wasn't a trace of a struggle, of an intrusion, of the fact that anyone had been there at all.

You can probably guess how Hidan acted. Actually, I am rather surprised he didn't do more than he did.

We were able to hide the shotgun from Shikamaru's parents. We had it with us, and the first thing Hidan did when we got back home was cock it and run out to the backyard (via the basement, the only way) and pointed it at various bushes outside, screaming and yelling at imaginary enemies if they wanted to take him on and get some.

Shikamaru walked around inspected things, turning on lights and looking around corners and in between nooks and crannies or anyplace that might have a suspicious fingerprint he didn't recognize. People have endlessly told me I'm too damned smart for my own good, but they must not have met Shikamaru, a genius who can even see and recognize fingerprints. He's informed me that, based on fingerprints, nobody but us has been here. I wondered if he would be intrigued by Sakura's fingerprints, if they would have something in them that made them birdlike, but he said no, they were normal. How about that.

I started worrying. A lot. I paced through the circle made by the conjoining kitchen and family room, thinking of any possibility besides the one that said Sakura had died fighting those four enemies.

Soon Shikamaru started asking what was going on (a day later. Of fuckin' course...) and I was apparently high enough to tell Shikamaru was had been going on without a trace of skepticism or disbelief. He took in the information with just those expressions, and instantly started theorizing. His first conclusion was that yes, she'd died fighting them. Thank God, thank _God, _he then stuttered and said, "Wait, wait, God I'm so stupid—never mind, if she died those four guys woulda definitely come and killed us by now."

So then when I finished the story, when Hidan had searched the entire house top to bottom with his gun and scared our next-door neighbors and was sitting on the couch being morbidly silent, Shikamaru stood with me in the doorway of our my house and told me a few more possibilities. I remember the exact words he used: "One guess I got is that they took her alive back to their 'Chambers lab' place. But since you make her sound way too strong for that to happen, that opens up another possibility or two. Firstly, maybe she allowed herself to be taken to save you two, and secondly, branching from my beginning point, maybe she was overpowered. No matter how fast she is or how strong, you gotta admit she was outnumbered."

I had stared, frowning, and Shikamaru, looking uncomfortable, went on. "She could still be leading them away right now. Maybe she's flying somewhere a hundred miles from here and those four guys are chasing her on the ground. And my last guess is that maybe _she _killed the four guys and now she's running away from the scientists who would probably be really pissed at that and doesn't want you guys to be involved. And if it's either one of those, I would be feeling good right now; she knew you for days, and whatever choice she made, she did it to keep you guys safe. Guess she thinks you're really cool."

That doesn't make me feel good. Moron. I told him this.

Shikamaru only scoffed. He turned to Hidan. "How 'bout you, Hidan? Got anything to say?" I saw Hidan shake his head and rub his hands anxiously over his eyes. And it's not like I can blame him. He's made a monumental friend in her. Sakura had effortlessly weaved herself into our lives for two days and made them a kind of fantastical and laugh-filled weekend. Her awe at TV dinners and television remotes, and horror at seeing _Alien _for the first time, and laughter as she used a sonic toothbrush, had...I didn't even have a proper word for what she had done to us. Sakura had done those things with him, marveled at us, and maybe it was that wide-eyed face whirling into vicious glares and _fistfuls _of lightning that made me look at her as I did. And it's not like she wasn't cute as some Japanese mascot. Jesus fuck, did I just say that?

She would have been just as perfect even if she was a regular, average someone living in Portland. The fact that she was naively oblivious to me and Hidan liking her was also a bonus.

"Stop daydreaming, fag! Come with me!"

You know what that fucking cousin of mine did? He slapped me twice like some bitch. I had a fork in my hand and I was ready to stab the motherfucker. I was so tired of his bitching, his doing everything wrong and wasting things, and-

"Come on, Shikamaru's got five more hunting rifles in his garage! We're going on a trip!"

The fork stayed pointed at him. "What the hell are you talking about?" I snapped, even though I knew exactly what he meant. My purple-eyed cousin rounded on me and pointed the gun's stock threateningly at my nose. "After Sakura and those bitch things that are chasing her, that's what I'm talkin' about! You, me and Pineapple-head here are going to look for her. Start the car and pack some shit."

All right, perhaps I didn't know what he was talking about. Feeling pretty blunt, I repeated, "What are you _talking about?" _

But Hidan was already running upstairs. He shouted down to me and Shikamaru, "I just fucking told you! We're packing up some stuff and going to look for her! You wanna just sit here going to class every day and wondering if she's dead or not or ever coming back? I'm going after her, and you two are comin' with!"

Shikamaru blinked in surprise and tried to say something. "Why am I…?" he began.

But Hidan came running down the stairs in a new outfit, a jersey and a pair of jeans with rips in the knees. He had two heavy-looking black backpacks in one arm. "Cause you're fucking smart, Shikamaru!" Hidan shouted, dropping the backpacks as he jumped down the last five steps. Shikamaru and I staggered to catch them both before they hit the ground, and they were even heavier than they looked and I didn't even want to know what kind of shit my cousin put in them.

Shikamaru opened his mouth, presumably to ask what smartness had to do with anything right now, but Hidan came practically skipping from the kitchen with three meat cleavers in his hand (the hell...?) Me and Shikamaru dodged the knife-wielding man and moved away in between the TV and the couch, out of the way of Hidan. He came up to us and started opening and unzipping pockets around the backpacks, searching for places the cleavers could go into.

"I'd rather take along two Einsteins than just one if I'm going after a bunch of monster-people, and if we do really good, Shikamaru, you might get some serious detective info on Chambers Inc. Maybe you could be the one to shut the whole fucking thing down!"

I expected Shikamaru to utter some mild and witty remark that would have Hidan laughing it up and ruining the grave seriousness of this situation. But he stayed silent. I didn't get why. If Shikamaru did or didn't want something, unless he wanted to be polite, he always said it. To Hidan, Shikamaru not responding is going to mean the same thing as saying, "Yeah, I'll go." He kept his mouth closed but I did not.

"Gimme the cleavers. We'll put them in the glove compartment in the car. Shikamaru, the keys are in that little red basket-thing on the kitchen table. Go in the garage and start the car. I'm gonna call all our lecturers and Shikamaru's parents and tell them we're going out of town for a week."

I said that because, yes, Hidan was right, the last thing I wanted was for that girl to die for _our _worthless sakes.

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A two-for-one chapter, like usual. Enjoy it. Judgement Day is at last over and we can move on with the story. :)

Ta...Storm


	15. Fifteenth

**EDIT, October 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

I had a delightful time at a little family Easter party. Me and my (also teenage) cousins participated in an egg hunt (and I got the most ;D) each with the obligatory candy inside, which we traded and imparted value on like poker chips. This happy experience prompts me to write a new Airborne chapter, fueled by Easter fun. Sakura is clearly having no such fun. Let's see what's goin' on with her.

Chapter the Fifteenth.

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January 14th, 10:00 at night, midnight at the latest. ...Neji POV

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I suppose when you fulfilled your lifelong dream and are now living it, you get to reminiscing upon the old, worse times, and using the memories to realize, again, how fantastic and life-changing this dream is. I've never been able to have such a feeling before tonight; I've never thought it wise to hold such an impossible fantasy. But here I am. I am living a dream, walking on air, feeling the joyous pulse of my own heart, and not caring at all of the freezing wind I sped through. Not to mention I was not half aware of where I was going, just grateful I had someone's footprints and back to follow.

No, right now, I was indeed far too busy recalling the uglier days, the days that made this one worth it. I was too busy looking up through our tree cover to see a silver-winged creature flying above us with crisp, elegant flaps and movements of her limbs.

My mind insists to me that the occasion I'm recalling right now occurred in late July, though the exact year escaped me, unfortunately. I put a careless mental tag (2002) on the memory and went on with it, a sort of practice I would never implement in real life (carelessness...Gods, I would never.) But if I was right, I had to have been barely six years old. And as Itachi noted, I looked older than God meant me to be at six years of age. I surely looked twice that age, feeling the marks of puberty when a boy my age should have been feeling the marks of paper and crayons. I certainly had no crayons; my plaything for that period of many months was a headband of cloth. Anko was the one to suggest the idea. I had always been disgusted with her filthy mouth and disregard for what I think are normal social morals, but I was too tired this day from a six-hour trial to waste energy hating and cursing her. All I had energy for was poking and prodding at the headband. I think I wanted to pull a thread out without the use of my claws. A challenge indeed.

I was perfectly content to drift off to sleep now. I wished to have a dream wherein I would pummel Deidara and not be punished or behaviorally examined for it, and wherein Sakura would sit next to me so I could teach her to speak. I got the second half of my wish, the more important one. It was like several of its kind that I'd had: the two of us sat down together in a white room and we carried on with our practices unbothered and unwatched, and Sakura would be still so that I could touch and look at her. Truly a dream.

Her first word was "glass" in almost every single dream and I could never figure out why that was, since I had always wanted to teach her my name first, and at the end of each dream, I could never remember what her voice sounded like. In this dream, I was explaining to her that the letters J and G can sound the same, and she happily accepted this knowledge. In my dreams, she responded to me happily. I always thought she would if she got the chance. But at this point in the dream Karin came into the room and threw a jar of red pens at us. And then I woke up to Karin standing above my bed, holding a clipboard and wearing a newly pressed labcoat. She scribbled notes upon the clipboard so quickly I wondered at whether or not she could read her own handwriting.

"Come along, Number 6." she snarled with a curled lip. "It's Wednesday…I know you _love _Wednesdays."

Of course I hated Wednesdays. Every Wednesday at noon I was taken to Medical Checking Room 4, where something or other would be done with my bones. The marrow could be sucked out or a bone could be broken or crushed or injected with nano-things that would eat away at them for hours. Across the years, the scientists had played with my bones in exactly seventy-one different ways. But the walk to that room was just as important: would I see anyone I knew on the way there? Any of my friends, my packmates? Anyone whose face in my mind would help distract me from whatever I was going to be subjected to?

"Come _along, _I said!" Karin screeched, and with an exhausted grunt I complied. There was nothing else I could do.

She flashed a green card in front of a complex scanner just next to the door, and once the scanner beeped thrice, she punched in a code and the door slid open. I followed her out of my comfortably dark, warm room into a hallway. A white hallway. She walked behind me, because she knew I knew the way.

We, my friends and I, were smart enough to memorize things, commands like yes and no, and routes from one room to the next. Sure, once in awhile we heard the employees talking and learned things from what they said, but they were all insignificant. It's not like I would ever need to know the atomic number of Mercury, but I did know it. I knew a lot of random information but did not put them to any use.

"Dilated pupils? Scratchy throat? Heavy breathing? Stomach pains?" Karin was muttering something to the papers on her clipboard. I wasn't sick, so perhaps she was speaking of someone else. God have mercy on him if it's Sakura or one of my friends. Will he today? This once?

I turned my head as I walked to look through the windows in the doors we passed. I had passed a dozen or so now, and looked in the thirteenth, expecting an empty room of no activity. But I saw Itachi in a very long room, at the very end. A metal cube hung from a rod in the ceiling and was crushing Itachi against the wall. The strength of his arms and only the strength of his arms would keep his body from being crushed. And if not, the scientists would unflatten his bones so he could do it again. I keened quietly for him. I don't think he heard me.

Karin slapped my sore right shoulder to tell me to turn a right corner at an intersection of halls, and I did so. We were almost there. I started to shake and pushed my fingers together so they could shiver in each other's company. And I looked into one last room for a distraction. This was the point of this memory. Sakura was in this room. She was standing and Kabuto was holding her little shoulders while Yuugao stood in front of her with her arms slightly out. She held a strange instrument in her hand. It looked for all the world like they were about to violate her. These were days when I thought Sakura was one of us and belonged to us. I am a caracal, and when someone dares to do such a thing to my kitten I will rage. I moved from Karin's set path and beat a fist on the door. "Demons! Get away from her!" I screeched at them.

The two scientists within the room jumped and looked irritated. Sakura's eyes were wide and her body still. I thought I had saved her. I thought, like always, that the scientists heard meaningless animal noises from me and Sakura understood me. I felt sure of this when Karin slammed her clipboard onto my head. "Stop that nonsense! Be quiet! Number 6, come along. Immediately."

My caracal ears pointed forward, and my human ones, too, strained to hear the scientists' reactions as they frowned and murmured inside. I stayed outside, helpless and invalid, with another slavemaster pulling me away from my kitten. She kept watching me. I thought she was grateful. What had she thought, really, in that time? Did she think I was trying to get in and eat her? I'll never get used to that idea of hers. I'll never understand how she so misconstrued our love.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, little one. I wish I could help you." I stared at her longingly and thought she understood. She remained soundless, small, and unprotected.

Kabuto came up to the door and opened it to talk to Karin about my misbehavior, and they discussed acceptable means of change for me. I didn't care about the implications of that. I looked past him frantically to see Sakura again. When I did, when there was only Kabuto and a few meters of space between us, she lifted her feet slightly and placed them delicately down again, like a frightened filly. Her eyes were big and many-shaded, like jade. They were fascinating and beautiful. Conflicting. Emotional. They told so much. At least, I thought they did. The lord above knows I, too, was misconstruing the emotions I read in Sakura's eyes.

I did not, however, misconstrue her secret. I knew she had one. All of us did. We never guessed at Sakura's vast mind and knowledge, or her hatred and her long-held plan of escape. The one thing we knew for sure about Sakura, and that was that she was hiding _something_, something that could be very small and insignificant or very large and meaningful, but we respected her need to keep it her own.

Suddenly the two scientists in front of me stopped their conversation. Karin stopped, at least, to grab my left caracal ear and pull on it. I screeched like a kitten myself, but I couldn't help how sensitive they were. That she would literally pull my ear, dig her nails into it! How vulgar to think this, but Karin, you're a nasty _bitch. _

"You don't need to do that, Karin." Kabuto chided, shaking his head and adjusting his glasses. "Poor kitty. He just wants to chase her again. He missed his chance last week because of that hurricane we had, fucked up the forest out there and even our schedule in here." He was partially right. To chase and play with Sakura was always a good time.

"He could have broken the plated window, Kabuto! A window this thick costs a damned pretty penny, and he's nearly cracked it just by slapping it! God! Number 6, for the last time, come! Follow! You can hunt your precious little Number 9 on Friday."

Kabuto and Karin pulled me around the corner and I grudgingly obeyed them. Yuugao glared at me as I left and I was able to see her sneering at Sakura while the girl stared up at her and said nothing.

And so, when Choza and Genma, two workers, simulated a battle and shot me in the left arm with all too real bullets, the pain was just a little more bearable, thinking about the poor girl who was hopefully resting in her cell by now while the Chambers employees were busy with me. Did I know at that point that she had no cell, just a dog crate? Did I still think she had her own heated room and soft bed?

While wondering that, I ran into a tree.

Everyone stopped and came back to see what in the world was wrong with me. I wondered, too, because underneath the layers and layers of pure _pain _in my face and chest, I felt mortified that I could live in my memories for several minutes and run along tree branches at the same time, and then five seconds later could not. I growled at this foolish display I was making of myself. I looked so, so stupid. Naruto would be hard-pressed to make himself a bigger idiot than I just did. And everyone is coming back and grinning. Naruto and Kisame were fighting the urge to laugh in a branch below me. At least Deidara was out of sight yet. He was the third member to that party of morons and I'm rather glad I didn't have to scowl at all three of them at once.

A tree branch dropped near me, and I looked up to see Kakashi and Sakura, both crouched in an ash tree directly above me. Kakashi was several branches lower than she was, perhaps because he wanted me to see just how easily he could balance on that very skinny branch there and hardly even pay attention to it while _I _crashed headfirst into tree trunks.

There were a few laughs from everyone, even Sakura, and with a joke or two courtesy of Kisame we kept moving through the cold. Sakura was laughing, too, and this should have influenced me much more than it did. But for the next few minutes I wanted to sulk in my shame and horror and hiss at Naruto. I will have plenty of time for her later.

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Somewhere in the first dark hours of January the 15th, maybe it's 1:00 in the morning, maybe it's 2:00, I don't freaking care! ...Sakura POV

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What have I done what have I done what have I done what have I _done? _

I've just sold my soul to the devil's lackies, that's what I've done! Oh my God oh my God oh my _God! _

Can you believe how calm and polite I made myself act back there? It was insane! Itachi was making skin contact with me, had his demonic, evil claws on my foot and I hadn't screeched or attacked him or anything! I had spoken plain English with them for a whole uninterrupted conversation, during which I agreed to go back to the place I spent my entire life planning my escape from and I even promised to help annihilate it—which is about as easy and likely as you getting struck by lightning as you read this sentence, my friend.

This can't even be _done. _And it's dangerous as all hell. We could very likely be caught again by Chambers and taken right back. We can't barge in like some angry teenagers, egg and spray paint the place and say 'Cool story bro' and be done. No. Big no. But that's what I agreed to.

Why am I doing this at all, you ask? Legit question. Great question. Yeah. I know the answer but I have trouble understanding it myself. The thought of the Chambers employees, the entire corporation, in fact, dying at my feet and being revealed for the monsters they are…I can't resist it. I want it to happen. And I can't do it alone.

Just as influential, if I say no to them, Kakuzu, Hidan and Shikamaru will be in imminent danger the rest of their lives. The male experiments will make it their life mission to kill them because I broke my word. Not only would I be absolutely heartbroken if they died, I would be further ruined because I dislike breaking my promises. At least, ever since I found people worth keeping them for. I am a good person, a good person to other good people who deserve good treatment. So I don't understand why I'm helping out these monsters of all organisms on this planet.

And Deidara apparently is afraid of heights? I never would've guessed that. Now I know the reason he hasn't used his wings since he's left the Chambers lab to chase me is because of fear, not because the scientists discouraged it but in comparison to everything else that really _doesn't matter! _

What about Zetsu calling me "little one"? Is he insulting me? Toying with my mind? Is he really clever enough to tease and sneer at my mind like that? I don't understand and I hate not understanding. I didn't know how to react when he said it. I'm thinking up a reaction to it even now. I'm a couple hours late so clearly I've missed the boat.

Well that tangent about "little one" was a nice calm stretch. It thankfully kept me away from the more pressing matter at hand, and also from my madly beating heart and terrified, chilled blood because _I looked Itachi in the eyes and I can still feel the death in me. _

I've never looked him in the eyes before. Word from others told me his eyes were red, but that word does no justice for what's actually there. His eyes are red, redder than blood, darker than blood. I'll never understand how I was able to keep that cool, indifferent expression while I stared into those…those pools of darkness. You heard me. Call it poetic, I don't give a crud. They are pools of darkness no matter what you say. I swear I could stick my finger into Itachi's eye and not feel anything inside because they are—they _are—_endless pools of red nightmares. And I, _me_, unlucky, weird, winged little _me,_ just stared into them like they were nothing. I should be proud. I'm still draining some leftover heart-stopping fear, so the pride will have to wait.

That fear will never stop draining from me, though. I'm terrified now, I was before, and I always will be. I better get used to it. Thank goodness that after a life like mine you get the ability to hide most of your fear. So I probably look mildly thoughtful up here in the sky (I'm actually pretty low, but whatever), pretty mellow to anyone who can see me, but inside I'm a raging twister of fear, anxiety and what-the-hell-do-I-do-now-ness.

At some point they're going to stop to sleep, and I'm extremely sleepy right now, and I won't be able to blink without having the fear that they'll slice my limbs off while I'm grounded and very near them. I'll have to be tensed up all night, ready for an attack, always ready to take off no matter what position or situation I happen to be in. I got in some good practice for that while I was waiting for them at Buffalo Jump. I think I have a good chance of surviving. I think I'll live to obliterate the Chambers lab with them. _With _them. Ughh!

I will work hard to keep myself alive. If they plan to kill the scientists at the lab we grew up in and then kill me, they'll find themselves having some serious trouble. I'm not going to die because of them. I have, have always had, reasons to live. Important ones.

Dammit, they're slowing down. They're probably stopping to sleep. Prepare yourself for a night of no sleep, self. I folded my wings in partway and half-dived down to the reliably thick branch of a spruce tree. I was perhaps twenty-five or thirty feet above them all. I could listen in on them if I liked, but I tuned out their voices. What with my little fearful thought venting before, you should understand I don't want to hear their voices right now.

Deidara looks like he's annoying Kakashi and Itachi. I wonder if they'll slash him or beat him for misbehaving. Itachi was talking, and most of the group was listening, save for Sasori and Neji, who were looking around the area as though they expected someone to jump out at them. The weasel experiment glanced casually up at me, and I wanted _so _badly to cringe or turn away but with effort the size of Montana, kept my cool and stared right back down at him. Then Naruto raised his hand. He was jumping up and down like some kind of moron. Before anyone could say anything to him, he had jumped up to one of the tree branches, and then up to another and another and I realized he was trying to get close and…I assumed, "talk" with me.

"Sakura! Sakura!" he called, tail swishing goofily. He was standing on a branch just below me, so that his head was about level with my ankles, and his hand rested on the same branch I was on, near my foot. "We're sleeping here. This tree's pretty thick so if it starts raining, we'll be dry if we stay underneath it. And we're taking sleeping shifts, and Zetsu's first. Kakashi wanted to come up and tell you, but he's so tired right now I beat him to it. We wanted to let you know. Oh, are you hungry?"

This was, compared with all other things I'd heard Naruto say, which weren't many, one of the longest, and I took notice. Naruto was cheerful and talkative. Duly noted.

"Er…ah, no. I'm not." This was only a half-lie. The last thing I ate was two little boxes of raisins I'd found unopened around the cliff, possibly left by tourists. I'd eaten them yesterday and while they tasted good, they weren't filling. But I wasn't about to tell them that. Or anything, if I could help it.

"Oh. Well, if you are, Kakashi and me can catch us a deer or something. Deidara and Itachi know how to cook. Special ability-things."

I cocked my head a bit. Naruto's ears pricked—what's up with his face? He's got this happy smile, did I do something stupid?—and he said, "Oh, you don't know? Itachi can breathe fire, black fire, like ink. Kabuto used to call it 'Amaterasu,' which was this really special Japanese name from this one story. And Deidara can use his explosive-dirt-clay thing to fry stuff, even food. It's insane."

I laughed then, and I have no idea why because he just described a few ways that my enemies can burn me to death, which is not fun (I would rather freeze to death anyway, you know me and cold weather). It was something stupid and spontaneous, which Naruto must have liked, because he smiled along with me. "Well, everyone else is okay with hunger for now, so we're going to sleep. We only slept for a few hours while coming up here. Spent the whole time running. Wanna come down?"

At such a suggestion I could only crack an amused grin and chuckle half-heartedly…actually, more like no-heartedly. "Not till all of you are dead asleep. I've risked enough already. It might be safer to stay up in this tree all night anyway."

Naruto's gold fox ears drooped, just a smidge. "You don't trust us." he murmured with dark eyes.

I darkened my own eyes to match the situation. Mine were dark and fierce, I knew, his were dark and sad. Good. For once I'm the one dominating. "Of course I don't. Your words from today are impressive but meaningless. I have eight years' worth of evidence that say the exact opposite of the pretty lies you told me."

The "meaningless" bit was the part I meant to be most piercing, and I think it worked. His pupils almost seemed to contract, and his mouth parted like he was going to say something and forgot exactly what. He remembered a few seconds afterwards, and this of course was accompanied by his eyes turning bright and anxious. "We were playing! Playing!" he exclaimed, probably loud enough for the experiments down on the ground to hear. Damn him. "Playing and talking to each other were the only things we could do to keep ourselves from turning to suicide. We tried—_I _tried hardest, I swear—to help you by doing that. You didn't stop to play with anyone, or talk with anyone, or talk at all. How you did it…we can't really…"

"Understand how I made it that far?" I finished scathingly. There was some satisfaction, some superiority, in being able to say what he couldn't. But that meant I had to add to the thought, which was a little more difficult. "Because I wanted out, Naruto, and I had the means necessary to do it. Even if I didn't, I would have watched and waiting until I could. It was determination and skill. And patience." He looked awe-struck, but what struck me was that I was telling him the whole truth. How strange, to tell this creature the truth when all he does is feed me lies. And that, I didn't like. I tacked on another thought just to wash this one away. "Were you and your friends just trying to survive, or were you actually planning to escape that place?"

Naruto looked away, contemplating. After another second or so, still looking away, he said, "…Sort of…I think the plan was to take advantage of any big opportunity we found. Like if we were all let outside together or something, we'd run off. The outdoor trial place was a pretty good spot, now that I think of it. I don't know why we didn't think of trying to knock down the walls, or jump over them. We just...didn't."

"And what if the opportunity never came?" I asked, knowing I was getting valuable information, something important that I might need someday, one of the many thousands of things I thought I may just need to know. "What if you were kept in that building forever?"

"We wouldn't. They planned to send all of us off overseas sometime this summer. Somewhere in the Middle East. We would kill terrorists and disarm bombs and stuff, and worst case scenario, we'd run away while we were in Iraq or whatever place."

And that really didn't make sense to me, because I had never been taught to kill (by the scientists) or how to disarm bombs. I've always known I would eventually be shipped off to battle somewhere, but never knew when or where. You'd think they'd give me more battlefield training than they did.

"Then that's the difference." I concluded quietly. "I was listening for information all the time. Anything any of those people said, I heard, I stored away because I thought I might use it to live my free life later. The only time when I didn't listen was when I slept…I assume you didn't have your ears open every minute of the day?"

He shook his head. "No. Just when we wanted to know something. When Kisame was going to one of the Medical Checking rooms—cause he got sick all the time—or how much Choza's new cell phone cost or something. Sasori or Itachi _might _have listened more, they're smart like that, but they probably didn't do it as much as you. Sasori has really good hearing, almost as good as mine, so he probably heard stuff even when he wasn't listening."

"You didn't have to tell me all that," I laughed a little. "All I asked was if you were listening in on the scientists a lot. A quick yes or no question. Why would you tell me…all about Sasori, all about anything?" After all, I could use that information against him one day. I would. Sasori has excellent hearing. Check.

"I trust you." He pointed down to his seven friends. "They do, too."

My only comment to that little bit was, "What? Why?"

"Because you're a good person." And no, I don't know how he would know that or why he would bother finding it out anyway. "And if you trust a good person, they'll trust you back."

I didn't say anything.

Because that was…indeed, very…correct.

So, I voiced that thought, still blinking in surprise that Naruto would know something of such a plain yet admirable wisdom. "That's…that's true. But good people will only, or should only, place their trust in other good people. I have little evidence showing me that you aren't the exact opposite. Naruto, even if I wanted to trust you, I don't think I could make myself do it." And you know what I added to that little speech, for the sole reason of being polite to evil monsters so they're less compelled to eat you? "I'm sorry."

"Me, too." he said, tail noticeably drooping. "But that'll change. Stay with us and you'll see."

I said nothing, but sat down on my tree branch and nodded. Not because I expected my trust in the male experiments to change—HA!—but because I knew I'd see _something _while staying with them, be it their true savage natures that I knew they were hiding or the death of Karin or Kabuto or something else.

That one nod must have satisfied him. He smiled at me, showing his sharp teeth (let me note quickly right here, _sharp teeth_) and turned around to make his way down the tree back to his friends. "Okay. 'Night, little one."

"_Wh—!" _I just barely stopped myself from grabbing that fox by the ears and throwing him over the nearest mountain. But I couldn't stop myself from glaring and bristling my feathers a little bit. Oh, I was also fisting the bark in my bare hands, too, which was apparently so weak it came off the tree in my fingers. I banged the back of my head against the tree trunk exasperatedly. Okay, I didn't make note of this before, but I had found something like a reason for Zetsu calling me "little one." And that reason was plain and simple age. The others are several years older than me. So, no matter my size, I'm going to be "little" to them. But I still haven't worked out if it was meant to frighten me or insult me or both. So I just let it go and hoped it would be a one-time thing.

But Naruto, too? Our age gap is about a year and a half. Am I really so little in his eyes? Such a weak, insignificant bug?

I admit I'm short. I'm small, I'm skinny, sometimes I'm afraid I'll get stepped on. (Seriously.) No getting around it. But do people have to exploit it? It was okay when Hidan and Kakuzu did, because they're my friends and friends playfully taunt each other, but my worst enemies…Jesus Christ!

Let's find something new to think about, huh? How about…going down to the ground and sleeping near them? Oh, nice job, self. Think of the worst thing possible at the moment. My mind is so awesome like that. Well, do _you _think I'll go down there eventually? I'll tell you.

I will. After an hour or so I'll go right in the middle of them, the most dangerous spot there is.

Because when they appear to be sound asleep and they up and attack me out of nowhere, I know I will be able to jump up into the sky and fly away, having the evidence that yes, they were after my life and I was right all along.

And I would find Hidan and Kakuzu and Shikamaru again, take them to a safe place, maybe overseas where the male experiments can't go.

Because they're my friends. I _must _protect them. It's the only reason I'm here.

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Let me say this. In fanfiction, I like it if the guy is older. I don't really know why. But that is basically the reason Sakura is the youngest of the experimental group. Oh, I also like the name "little one." It's one of the few things I can make myself call cute, besides my dog Samus, and the talking dog character Courage.

Yeah, I promised in Chapter 13 you'd find out why our eight handsome dudes like Sakura. The reason's in this chapter and the one before, just somewhat stretched. Here's the compressed version: Once upon a time, March 28th, 1999, Sakura's born. So the male experiments hear the scientists talking, find out that there's a new girl in their little concentration camp, feel pity for her because she's just a little girl and no one, especially not a little girl, deserves what they go through. Later on they meet her in person in the white "chasing" rooms. Turns out she's quite cute. Males try to comfort girl, say they just want to play a game of tag. Sakura does not understand their animalistic language, runs away, males give into "chase prey" insticts and try to catch her. And never succeed.

Years pass. She grows up, so do they. Never once do they catch her; as their want to finally catch her grows and grows, so does their fondness of her. She grows more beautiful over the years. Noticeably. After hundreds of failed chase-catch attempts, males consider Sakura their property, their prey. And so, back in Chapter Four-ish, when they finally get a chance to go out into the world and find her, talk to her, make her part of their "pack," they're freaking ecstatic to take the chance. And Neji, lucky dog, in Chapter Nine, is the first to catch her.

At least I gave it some freaking background. Give the author a break, huh? Neji's and Zetsu's POVs were hell to write.

Also, I realize that so many dudes liking Sakura may seem Mary-sue-ish. I've done my best to stave off that impression by making Sakura an almost snobbishly intelligent, resistant or even bullheaded against the truth, and hateful towards most people in her world. Well, thanks for reading this massive ending note. I appreciate it if you did.

Ta...Storm


	16. Sixteenth

**EDIT, October 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through...and then update it. YAY.

Note of vague importance to the plot: the experiments do see each other as one species, and they only speak to each other, which is why they can understand each other's talking despite their being different "animals".

Chapter the Sixteenth.

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The first few hours of January 15th, I don't know, maybe 3:00 in the morning? Do I look like I have a watch on me? ...Sakura POV

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I'm scared. I'm so scared. I know I've been more scared than this many times before. But I can't stop shaking. I can't stop seeing horrible pictures in my head. It's been over an hour since Naruto climbed up my tree and invited me to come down with the others. I had meant to. I had meant to go down there and prove my point that they would only attack me, and that would give me a reason to leave. I should have gone down to enact that plan a long time ago. But since then I've gotten so, so scared.

My brain can't help but dig up old problems I had thought of before I met them all at Buffalo Jump: how was it that I could magically understand their words when I could only hear growling from them before? Do I really have a chance of saving Kakuzu, Shikamaru and Hidan? Where is my real safety? What do I have to do to be free?

Somehow, I think it's the "little one" comment that's getting to me the most. At least, the reason behind it: the fact that they're all older than me. It might just be their ages. The fact that I'm younger than all of them has been eating at my mind for a few hours now. Because it has so many implications. The worst of those is that I'm not the brainiac I think I am. At least, not in comparison. These creatures can devise plans on their own, create fantastic lies, and speak intelligible English. In their time on God's green earth, have they put their brains to use as well? Are they lying about that, too? Are they plotting something so diabolical and clever I can't even touch the tip of the iceberg? What kind of iceberg would it be, that _I _can't do more than touch its tip?

And what if they fall back on easy, primitive strength: what if it's not a masterful plan that kills me, but their height, their weight, their power, their size...to use such things on me, no matter how strong I am, might defeat me in the end. I'm little. I'm...I'm scared. I'm clinging to myself in fear. I'm so scared.

But I have to go down there, don't I? Through this haze of terror, I know I do. If I don't, I'll be worrying over it all of tomorrow while I fly (and they run) closer and closer to the Chambers lab where we were born, and all through the next night we stop and I have this same problem. I don't need to engage in ferocious mental debate with myself about the pros and cons of staying and moving down. I don't need to reiterate how permanent the consequences are, and at what a price the pros are bought, and what hangs in the balance at all times. I fucking _know _and it sometimes it's such a hindrance to know things.

You know what? To heck with it, I'm going down there _now. _

I'm finding that I always try to plan for the worst and prepare myself for anything, but I usually just end up creating new plans from scratch in the middle of a situation. At least I'm not totally winging it. I kind of was winging it while I escaped the Chambers lab, and kind of following my lifelong plan. Clearly, that event had both pros and cons, but you with some, you lose some, yadda, yadda yadda.

So then I started climbing down the tree, in the slowest, tiniest and softest movements I could possibly make. I was moving on the thickest branches that would make no creaking sounds when I put my weight on them, and when I had to move across the trunk I would place my bare feet on the darkest bark, which I was thickest and had the least chance of breaking off and plopping down onto the head of some unsuspecting experiment.

The branch where I'd been hanging out for the past few hours was maybe thirty to thirty-five feet up, and if my estimation is correct, at this pace it would take me nearly twenty minutes to get down to the ground. But I'm not risking flight. It's going to create breezes and drafts that might wake up the males. Going slowly and surely and soundlessly is much safer. Next thing I knew, I was halfway there and I hadn't yet looked down to see if any of them were awake and watching me. God, I'm stupid! So much for lookout! So I stopped, closed my eyes briefly in the obvious fear and risked a look down.

They were all…Well, there was no way for me to really know if they were asleep, but that was what it looked like. Spread in a jagged circle, the eight experiments lay on the grass or against tree trunks in various positions. Naruto and Neji in particular were using tree roots like pillows, the comfort of which was doubtful. Everyone else used grass or their folded arm. I noticed confusedly that Sasori's lengthy black tail had disappeared. I reasoned then that he had wrapped it around his legs, and it was covered by his long, black coat so I just couldn't see it (and it crossed my mind that he appeared strangely _human _without it.) Kakashi's lower scarf, the one that always hid his mouth and nose, was looser now, revealing more of his cheeks. Very well-crafted, even for a genetically mutated wolverine. Next to him, Itachi lie serenely with his head on his arm.

Deidara and Kisame were more or less next to each other, Deidara laying sprawled out on the grass on his back with his big, ice-blue wings half spread on the ground under him. He appeared to be sleeping most deeply. Kisame sat against a tree trunk that was opposite my tree, maybe ten feet away, looking quite content. I didn't find it odd that he could sleep sitting up; I'd done it hundreds of times in my small dog crate at Chambers. So that left Zetsu.

Maybe he slept in the ground? I had already known for years Zetsu could melt into the ground and into trees and pop out whenever he wanted to; now I was wondering how long he could stay molded into those things. Possibly, he could—err, jeh—HUH.

I could barely form a word right then, much less a question, so the "huh" just came out as a flat, kind of disbelieving statement. In the lowest branch of the tree against which Kisame sat, maybe seven feet off the ground, was Zetsu.

His plant-thing…that giant, green structure that was always on his shoulders, that could open and close whenever he wanted.. i-it was _gone! _

Zetsu was just laying there looking perfectly human with his big grey trenchcoat, except for, you know, the purely yellow eyes and the half-n'-half skin coloring, with no flytrap thing on his shoulders! Where the freak did it go? I can't believe that at that moment I was feeling a temptation to walk over, wake the guy up and ask him!

I might have stood there for one minute or for ten, twelve or so feet high in what I guessed was a beech tree, staring wide-eyed at Zetsu who had suddenly lost what I'd always thought was a vital body part. Eventually I gathered myself and remembered I had to get all the way down there and face my fears. (Again.) So I kept going, keeping to thick branches, dark bark. Eventually I got down to a point where just one hand on a protruding strip of bark was keeping me on the tree. My free hand was in the air, balancing me, and my bare feet were laying flat against the bark. If my hand let go, I'd fall six inches or so onto the grass below. But I was afraid of the noise that'd make.

So I eased my body down slow as possible, fearful every second that the little stump of bark I held would snap off. That sound would be a thunderclap and would wake everyone. Their eyes would turn on me, their claws would turn on me, and then...oh, God, and then anything. But I was lucky. My toes touched the grass first, then my heels, and then I let go of the bark piece. I was on the ground now.

Now…the closest to the middle I could get would be in front of Kisame. If I sat down on that spot, Kakashi, Sasori and Itachi would be on my left, and everyone else would be on my right at some angle or other. Walking…okay, that could make little rustling noises. Have to be extra cautious here, slow and safe. Must create an art out of placing my feet in between a section of grass blades, on top of the smoothest, quietest layer of it. My art was successful: the only noises were a cricket and the males' breathing. Slowly, so ridiculously slowly, I made my way to the middle.

I was looking around constantly, looking for deadly eyes open and watching me, for Chambers scientists, even, for anything. I was in the middle of danger. When I got to the middle, I found that…the middle kinda sucked. More than I thought it would.

The ground sloped down a bit, putting me at the lowest point in our whole sleeping area. A disadvantage. When they jump up and attack me, they'll have the advantage of height. I'll have to jump harder and higher, flap faster, to get up into the air in time to save myself from being flayed. Item number sixty on the Sakura's List of Doom, Please Take a Number.

Once again I gazed around, then started to lower myself onto the grass, which would be even more work that lowering my feet onto it for each new step. There appeared to be no male experiment nor Chambers secret camera watching me. The breathing patterns I heard were all smooth and deep in the illusion of slumber; I knew better than to believe that. There was hardly a sound in the cold night but for the breathing of monsters. Here, I would feign sleep just as they were doing, slow my breathing and loosen my muscles till I was assaulted, at which point I'd fly away just as I'd always wanted to.

I found myself thinking of Naruto. Naruto and his wacko inborn ability to control the movement of air molecules. He could also turn them pointlessly orange in the process, so you wouldn't get punched with an invisible wind fist, but a visible orange magic fist. But the visible orange magic fist could still drive the air from my lungs and make cracks in my ribs. I'd seen it in action. It had never touched me (no part of him had ever touched me...discounting the time I touched his ears) That'll be one of the things he uses against me tonight. I'll dodge that and Sasori's swinging tail, Itachi's gaze searching for mine, and more. It's like I've just been dropped right into hell. It's not fair. It...

Eyes. I could feel eyes on me. Someone was looking at me. I stayed perfectly still.

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January 15th…either very late or very early depending on your perception of time ...Kakashi POV

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I don't normally operate on instinct. Strategy is more my realm, strategy and logic. It was that which assured me Sakura would come down from her treetop post eventually. It would be for an obvious reason, I knew: she was trying to prove that sometime in the night we would pin her down and kill her. She was so utterly convinced of this that she'd become afraid of the concept and took twice as long as I expected to come down from the beech tree. (And she'd gone so slowly that I could hardly hear her movement at all.)

Of this I was sure. She'd made her opinion of us clear enough. I have no idea how long it'll take to dispel it. She's completely convinced we're evil.

That made me glad I hadn't been the one to climb up her tree earlier tonight and talk to her. Naruto is much better at putting up a front of friendliness and innocence, probably because he _is _friendly and innocent. I think she'll open up to him before anyone else. When he spoke to her tonight, he got more information than I or any of my friends could have hoped for him to return with. He was so ecstatic to know and discover things first.

The first thing to come out of his mouth was that he'd asked her how she had managed to stay forcibly mute her entire life, a question that all of us burned to understand as well, and Sakura had answered him. She wanted out and she had the determination skill and patience to make it happen, is what he says her answer was. She had the resources of a mind and body available to her, and was watching and waiting and learning every day of her life. This meant it all centered around her will. Her will was more powerful than all of ours. And this last I said aloud. Everyone looked at me and agreed. Not because I am alpha, but because my words are right.

Next, our fox brother told us she'd never heard of Itachi's Amaterasu power before, a strange and convoluted ability that allowed him to breathe black fire like some fairytale dragon. She had been taken completely aback at that, and with the fact that Deidara's hand-mouths have more than once been used to fry food.

What came after this was his favorite part: after telling her of Itachi and Deidara, she'd cocked her head confusedly in a most innocent pose, so much so that he'd been tempted to pin her onto the branch and nuzzle her then and there for the action was so very adorable. It was only the fear of being electrocuted that kept him from doing so.

That started a little string of talking before we all went to sleep. Deidara and Zetsu got mildly irritated then that they hadn't taken the chance and gone up the tree before Naruto to speak to her. Zetsu insisted that verbal contact was necessary at the very least if we were going to burn the hidden laboratory to the ground with her help—"_Naruto you stupid little retard, you wasted a perfectly good chance to ask her about tactics!"—_but we all knew Zetsu was secretly shy in both his halves and understood exactly what he felt too embarrassed to say. Deidara voiced it for him, saying he would have taken the chance to nuzzle her no matter how terrible the voltage she inflicted on him afterward. To cover up the fact that he'd lost a feather of hers that he'd found at Highway 5 back near Portland, he reminded us all to everyone's chagrin that he'd licked her once, before she'd flown off away from the laboratory.

None of us had ever seen a shock collar up close at that time, so he'd been curious and crept near her while she was preoccupied watching Naruto and Itachi fighting. Killing two birds with one stone, he got a good look at the shock collar she'd worn for years—getting knowledge that helped with taking off our own later on—and given the speed demon a lick that he hoped would convey a cheery, playful message. We all knew it failed, so he did not completely finish the story to its unsatisfactory end.

Sasori, Itachi and I were kept busy the next half hour pushing down anyone who stood up and started walking towards her tree and holding our claws to their throats. This was a symbol of ours that didn't mean we were going to kill, but more along the lines of "Don't you dare," in a way that is menacing and not as life-threatening as it looked. This chased away some of the cold and warmed us a bit.

And here I was, nearly two hours after, laying on the ground, scarves covering my left eye and the lower part of my face per usual. I was glad for them, not just for the coverage, but for the extra warmth they gave. True, I could easily survive in this cold, but that didn't change the fact that I just didn't like it at all. I hoped that by looking at something warm, I would feel a bit better.

She lay down only a few moments ago, going down the tree so slowly and quietly that sometimes the sound of her movements completely disappeared and the cold and my tiredness nearly put me to sleep while I was trying to listen for her. But I heard the rustle of grass as she walked to her designated spot and lay down in a little ditch of sorts in the grass. Her back is facing me. Her wings loosened slightly as all body parts do in sleep, and I watched her as she feigned sleep.

I knew she was aware of me watching her. She was awake and waiting for me to attack her. Poor confused little one. I wonder how long it will take to convince her she's completely safe with us. These days I'm wishing more and more frequently that I hadn't been so passionate and fanatical in the Predator and Prey games inside the Chambers white rooms. Those encounters had frightened her deeply. I was saddened by, but also looked forward to, the work it would take to earn her trust for the first time.

For now I was satisfied to watch her. Satisfied that she was here with us, truly safe for the first time…yet disappointed at how she would get no sleep tonight.

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Sooo…tired….It's maybe…noon…on the fifteenth of January… ...Sakura POV

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Going to sleep late will prompt you to sleep late the next morning. And we definitely went to bed late here at Genetic Experiment Camp. The eight experiments must have been lying here for close to twelve hours, sleeping and dreaming stupid, ugly dreams. And I, at a time I should have been sleeping, have been tense and stiff as a crowbar, and hadn't slept a single minute.

The last time I had slept was up until the other experiments found me at Buffalo Jump, after a nap I would estimate to be six hours long. That was a long time ago, though, at least in my perception. I had lay in nearly the same position for twelve hours, eyes closed and ears open, waiting to be assaulted and maimed and nothing had happened. It...it blows my mind that they didn't do anything. It makes me scared for what could be planned for later.

Furthermore, though the experiments were all still laying down, sleeping, I had a nagging—pulsing, actually—suspicion that some of them were awake. Their tails have moved more than once and their breathing patterns have sped up a few notches. They're not nearly deep and spaced-out enough to be sleeping still. I'm very sure now that several of them are awake and only resting, not sleeping. My breathing, in comparison, has remained deep and spaced-out as well, accompanied by limp and loose limbs. Hopefully they believe I'm catching up on much-needed sleep, too, and are fooled by this facade.

Why can't they all just wake up right now, stretch a little and decide to keep running southwest towards Portland and the Chambers laboratory? Get this tension off of me for a little bit? Let me enjoy the freedom of the lonely, cold, gorgeous sky for a few hours? I need to be...not...so...fucking...stiff!

I dared to open my eyes, and, perfect timing, saw a blue glint. My gaze swiftly followed it, tracked it down right to the eyes of Naruto the fox. His eyes had caught mine, literally. What nice eyes he has. What deceptively sweet eyes.

His orange-gold tail lifted just a bit off the ground and swept through the air. _'Is he waving at me?' _I wondered. _'He knows I won't wave back. Why is he doing that?' _If he was trying to be friendly, he may as well just put that notion out of his mind. I stared back at him, unfazed. His smile was also unfazed.

Stupid fox. He's not even acting reasonable. So much for "with age comes wisdom." He's dumb and socially crafty as a walrus. Or a crab...something. Anyway, then I noticed how close I was to Naruto. His tail was almost close enough to me to reach over and touch. He _couldn't_ have been laying that close before. He was…he was using a tree root for a pillow before, two more arms' lengths away. He's not anymore.

He moved. Sometime in the night or in the morning he moved closer to me and I was so caught up in my worry and desperate fear that I somehow didn't notice! How could I not notice that? I should have been hearing an air-raid siren at seeing that, and it gets worse! Naruto also seems to know that he's within reaching distance of me. He lifted his tail again and I watched it, my hand opening slightly, threateningly. He knows I'll electrocute him. He had _better _know I'll electrocute him.

That freaking moron. He touched his tail to the side of my thigh. My thigh, you guys ought to remember, is uncovered. I'm wearing shorts. Naruto's furry tail was touching my skin. It was surprisingly warm. I would never have guessed it could feel this way, what with him and his friends complaining of the cold and all. His mouth moved, but no words came out. I attempted to read his lips. "Good morning," I think was what he was trying to mouth.

_'Welcome to hell!' _is what he really means.

I set my open hand on the grass. I did keep my hand open, though, so as to make electrocuting him easier if he mounts a sneak attack on me. A warm breeze went by suddenly, and I blinked because I hadn't felt warmth since leaving Hidan and Kakuzu's home. There had been heating and air conditioning there. I could sit on a heating vent or stand in front of the open fridge, or walk around with a blanket on me. That was my first experience of real warmth and here was my second. Naruto turned his face into the breeze and reveled in it, too. That he was enjoying it with me tainted the experience. It made me want to look away from him, and my hand was all prepared to attack him if need be, so I looked away. In the corner of my vision was what appeared to be a black snake. And that didn't make sense, because snakes couldn't possibly live this far north and the only black snaky thing I knew of at the time was Sasori's tail. And what a surprise I got when I turned my head up and saw said scorpion sitting next to me, looking down.

It can seem intimidating when you're laying down and someone is sitting next to you, looking down, appearing tall even if that person is short. But Sasori wasn't short. He was tall and wearing a black cloak he looked even taller. Because, you know, wearing all one color can make a person look taller. The effect did him fine justice. But I didn't like that justice. You know why?

He was in perfect position to kill me and I was such a fucking worrywart-nutcase that I didn't notice until now. Sasori had stood up, walked over, and sat down behind me and I hadn't noticed. This day was starting out with an unfairly bad record.

Please, god, if you're there, if you can help, let me live through this. I've been good. I've done my best. You know I have. I'm at the mercy of a devil. I might not live to see the next hour of this day.

"How was your sleep, little one?" he asked me. I paused a second before replying. I took up that single second with a grand analysis I hoped would save my life with some random piece of information.

He was sitting with his legs crossed and one leg sort of pressing against my back, warming it—Wow, I'm not noticing _anything _this morning—and his hands were casually resting in his lap. Close enough and equipped with enough speed to grasp my throat and strangle me if he really wants to. Other than that, he looked the same. For a quick two seconds or so, I noticed just how freaking _pretty _Sasori was. I don't have any experience in things of beauty except my own perspective of beauty. And my perspective of beauty contains things like mother nature, birds, falling snow, classical music and the graphics on Hidan's video games. But Sasori has no category there. He's just pretty.

This is...pretty hard to understand. It's so simple. He...he looks good. It's nothing biased. It's a fact, and that I am acknowledging it is strange. What is it about him that I am stating is pretty? What's new? Nothing, I think. His hair is still red and ruffled, he has creepily elegant posture, the stony (stoned) stare and his black tail, poison-tipped, and the gold...eyes...what?

Sasori's eyes have always been gold. But I'm looking into them right now—well ain't I brave—and they're brown, chocolate-brown. But I'm sure they've always been gold! Did the Chambers scientists conduct some kind of color-changing surgery on him before he was sent to chase me down? What happened to him?

But these thoughts took up all of one second. I tried to stall, give myself thinking time, time to do something before he decided he wanted to kill me. Oh, I also had to try and keep from trembling. "Unusual. It's ridiculously warm down here, and I don't mean compared to up in the tree." At least I was telling him the truth. Truth appeased people, even monsters. Sure, it was still roughly thirty degrees down here in our little grove, but compared to up in my tree or the sky, that's pretty cozy. I was assuming the males all had crazy-high body temperatures, or crazy-fast metabolism, and thusly gave off a lot of body heat.

"I'd attribute that to myself." he said as though this was something to be proud of. "I woke and noticed you shivering. How could I let my little one freeze when she is right next to me? I came closer to offer what warmth I have."

_My _little one, he says? Like I'm wearing a collar with his phone number on it? I wonder if Sasori sensed me tensing up in indignation. I wonder what that is making him think right now.

_His _little one. Pfft. Sicko thinks I'm "his" little one. I am _no one's. _

But I wouldn't say this out loud. I'm cowardly like that, you know, not expressing my most personal opinions to the enemy. So I sat up. That was a terrifying period of three seconds. Every fraction of it, I expected him to take advantage of my position, or my distraction or my movement. But he just stared at me. He just let me look him quietly in the eye, which I hadn't really done for many years. He has thick lashes, and maybe this cold is really getting to me if I notice that and not the un-safety of my surroundings.

Anyhow, I replied coolly, "The warmth you're offering is nothing compared to what I've already got. Are you sure you didn't crawl over to get some of it for yourself? If you really want my trust like Naruto said, you must at least tell the truth."

The redhead looked genuinely sad. A very convincing performance, I admit. Still looking at me with eyes that were mesmerizingly earth-brown, he moved his left hand near mine and mine, mine…mine just shot up there and our fingers laced together! All by itself. I don't know what the hell happened! It was like our hands had magnets in them. My surprise was practically flooding out of my face.

"Your skin feels warm even when you shiver. You must know that." And he was right, I did. "But I sensed that you needed more anyway."

Sasori saw that my eyes were trained on our hands. I wasn't looking, but I'm mostly sure that there was a little grin on his face then. "You can create electricity from nowhere. Defy science completely." he said. That he could put it so bluntly made me feel a tad ashamed somehow. "I can create strings from nowhere, move things without touching them. It is puppetry. It is telekinesis. The scientists think I could lift something as large as a house if I needed."

"And the largest thing you can lift now would be about what size?" I'm so glad my voice sounded collected and cool then. It was totally at odds with the confusion and shit that was going on in my mind right now.

"An elephant. A fully grown elephant."

He gave me a few seconds to absorb that, but I decided to save that absorbing for later, when I was alone. I observed him, his appearance, to take up the thinking space. His fingernails were painted black, courtesy of Orochimaru or Kabuto, I'm guessing (what purpose or implication this serves, I can only guess at). More importantly, the fact that one of the male experiments was touching me, and I was allowing it, was so, so _wrong _I could only stare at our interlocked hands like they were intertwined snakes or tentacles. That any part of us two was touching and meshing was terrible and was only fuel for nightmares about imprisonment and strangulation. And yet this felt better than me having to look Sasori in the eye. I don't understand the way he looks at me.

"Now if you didn't believe me before, then maybe you'll believe this." he said, and though he said nothing about our hands interlocking, I know from his drumming fingers that his mind is still on it. "Kakashi decided it would be best for everyone if we stayed in this area until tonight. For leisure. Itachi and Deidara want to wash their hair in a river nearby, Kisame wants to experience fresh water, and everyone else will want to sleep some more. Why not rest now while we have a chance, while no one knows where we are?"

You know, I had similar thoughts when I first came to Hidan and Kakuzu's house, you malicious little fuck, but I know better than to say it aloud. To my side I heard an experiment move and my body went rigid at the sound. It was Kakashi, just beginning to turn his head towards us. Even the faint creaking of his joints and skin creeped me out. He was laying on his back, with his hands behind his head and the scarf over his mouth turned up, the sign of a smile. Even with black pants and tight green coat and his usual navy scarves, all intimidating and dark clothes, he looks pretty…cheery. Not quite as frightening as usual. I wonder what violent sodomy he's thinking about right now.

"The way I looked at it, it would make a nice, cheerful memory if we end up dying over there." the wolverine experiment said airily. The location of "over there" didn't need further detail. "If we're tortured to death, we'll have something recent and fun to remember and distract from the pain. It sounds nastier when I say it aloud. But it would do some psychological good, wouldn't it? Both being somewhere peaceful, and being able to remember a peaceful time. Right?" He paused. "That's...right, Sakura, isn't it?" So he gave that whole explanation hoping I would confirm it at the end? What am I, your spellchecker? I told him he was right. Very neutrally.

When Naruto shot up suddenly from my right I about had a seizure, but Sasori wouldn't let me move my hand from his, so I could only bounce a little before stupidly landing on my butt again. "Kakashi when the hell did you wake up?" (No need to make note of your other friend creepin' on me and fondling my hand over here! It's just fine!)

The wolverine man shrugged. "A half hour back, maybe."

"Is Deidara awake?" As he said this, his fox ears twitched towards said older blonde, who appeared very much asleep.

"He's as out of it as he'll ever get." Sasori answered for him, and, finally, he let his hand out of my own and I set my lovely appendage on the grass, praying the majority of any poison scorpion molecules would be swept off. "Do you mean to drop that on him?" Sasori's tail was gesturing at some little object in Naruto's hand, but I wasn't looking at it. I was distracted by Kakashi, who was using his fingers to make a "Come-here-please" movement.

I bristled my wings just a bit and stared evenly back, fighting an angry grimace. Kakashi sat up and looked me in the eyes. It's eerie, how they all keep doing that. One stare and I feel like Jigsaw is telling me to play a game. And how my stomach turns when they smile at me. It's revolting.

But there wasn't much of a choice now. Only Sasori and Naruto were awake now, and they were pointing their attention to Deidara, about to be the butt of some prank Naruto was about to make. Kakashi and I were essentially alone. Could I handle him if he tried something? The oldest, possibly smartest experiment, whose claws could cut down trees? Heck, I'd dodged and deflected all eight of them once. Kakashi could be taken in stride, too. So I stood up and walked over to him, quieting and smoothing my steps on the grass. I sat down next to him. He's several inches taller than me, even sitting down. Some of it has to be due to his hair. I mean, geez.

"I heard you have some issues with trust." he said. The words were casual, but the underlying meaning not.

"Eight years' worth of experience and observation have given me that." I said. "But I've already told you that. Has something changed?"

His fingers curled a little tighter on his knees. But his eyes, one red as Itachi's nightmare-eyes, and one black as pitch, remained strangely passive and gentle. "Eight years' experience is wrong, Sakura. You're wrong and your entire mindset is a disproportionate misunderstanding." How eloquently blunt. Let's see where this soap opera goes next. "I hope we can reverse that in less than eight years. I want…we want nothing more than to help you. Be a part of you."

'_Care for me? Why? Predators don't care for prey.' _I voiced this opinion daringly. "Why would you care for me? We have no bond. The feelings you _say _you have for me are not mutual. I will continue to be hostile, Kakashi, and you'll soon get sick of it."

He crinkled his eyes shut and laughed. I was not sure how to react.

My wolverine companion-by-force looked at me again. "Now is that ever a fantasy. Is that why you're shying away from us so much? You're trying to make us perceive you as hostile?"

"Perceive," he says? I guess I should keep the old "what we perceive as reality" argument to myself. I told him, "I shy away from you because I don't believe your lies, and I fear for my safety, which I _perceive _is in danger."

Kakashi cocked his head a bit again and replied, "It doesn't matter how hostile you act. You will have to eventually see the truth. You're ours. You deserve our protection and our love, and we will give it to you always."

And their love? And their _love? _Now is _that _ever a fantasy. Or rather a big fucking joke.

That was too much. Now I was just getting mad. "I don't want love from you, or protection or anything but a complete lack of you in my life, and I sure don't deserve any of it. I did my best to avoid you all my life. I ran from you every day, refused to look at you, refused to speak to you, never did anything to support the idea that we could be friends, and I've recently beaten some of you bloody. Why would I possibly _deserve _anything good from you?_" _

Kakashi's scarf moved upwards a bit. He was smiling again. Why? "Sakura, when you were born some year and a half after Naruto, my brothers and I were horrified. Our world was very small and sheltered. We...we kind of thought that only males were suitable to be tortured and experimented on. That they would make a female to do the same thing made us sick to our stomachs." He paused to let me absorb his apparent chauvinism. "I believe Zetsu was the first to see you as an infant. He passed the room where you were being given your first shots and we only glimpsed you through windows for a year afterward. Only those glimpses and the scientists' obsessed chatter about you assured us they hadn't killed you. I was the one to see you next. By then you must have been close to a year and half old. I believe you looked about three and a half or even four. Do you remember being put in a white room with me for the first time?"

I nodded. I remembered most everything I'd ever experienced. It comes with the brains. Kakashi smiled, as though that was a fond memory for him. "Your wings were too big for you. It was cute." The little shine in his eyes and the curving-up of his scarf was unmistakable, because Naruto had made such a face to me, too. Still working on what it means.

"And I wanted to comfort you. Here was a small, innocent angel child, who probably suffered the same amount as any of us half-grown men. And from what we heard, this child was mute, and so couldn't even give voice to her pain. I pitied you and wanted to comfort you, so I came your way to do just that. But such a big, intimidating teenager approaching you was frightening, I think. You ran away, and I was struck by a delightful instinctual response. I chased prey. I chased playfully, because I thought you were enjoying the game with me."

To mention now that my first encounters with the male experiments are some of my worst and most frightening memories would earn me no safety points here. He continued on. "It was the same with the others, too. They wanted to console the mute birdchild, the small cub with scarred and bleeding paws. First we chased because you ran, and then we chased because it was a game we loved, and you never stopped, so you must have loved it, too. You became older, stronger and ever faster. Chasing you was such a challenge, such fun. You were always playing the prey while we played the predator. You were our prey and our cub. Ours."

That his experience of me was so primitive is forever burned into my psyche. I am not a whole person to him, but a cub, a baby animal that got kicked instead of loved. And he (if I'm a cub, what's he? A lion?) continued to perceive me as a cub my entire life. Perhaps he still perceives me as a helpless baby. Perhaps the reason why he keeps trying to hard to convince me his stories are true is tied into that. They say that the younger a piece of meat is, the sweeter it tastes.

Now I have to wonder if Kakashi's mind still operates in this animalistic fashion, or if he's capable of just as much reason and mathematically smooth logic as a person. Oh he's talking again.

"And you became more beautiful as you grew up, Sakura. You're a lovely sight to see, no matter what. We wanted to touch that beauty. Even just once." Kakashi's hand lifted and reached out to me. I watched it and its claws and the veins pumping vicious wolverine blood within. "Now we can touch it. And we can keep it. And your mind, and its secrets, too..." His eyes are drifting around my face, like there are answers to riddles to be found in my skin. "I don't understand how one so young can know so much. It's impossible. But it's right here, it's true."

The next action made me stiffen with fear, and I almost forgot to breath. He leaned his forehead against mine and I tried, tried desperately, to keep from moving myself backwards and away from him. "I would love to understand. Not just how you know so much, but everything about you I should have learned these past years but couldn't. Now we're on speaking terms, and I can finally get to know you. Well, to do that, I understand you really need to trust me. I know just the way." He moved back a bit, sitting straight up. Kakashi lifted his left hand to the black scarf covering his mouth and nose.

He pulled it down.

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Well, wasn't that second half a little fangirl-satisfying? SasoSaku and KakaSaku moments, two men who are older than her in both Airborne!verse and canon. I think I've got a thing now for Sakura and an older man. Oh, and sorry, no two-for-one chapter this time. This one was enough hard work. Just be glad I didn't make you wait any longer.

Notes about stuff? 1) Sakura mistaking Sasori's eyecolor is not particularly significant, just indicative of, again, how she wrongly perceives the male experiments. Not only is she totally wrong in how they think of her and feel about her, she even missed some obvious details about them, like the fact that Sasori's eyes are brown and not gold. A bit like Itachi, she was too scared of him whenever she saw him to look too closely at him.

2) Yes, in this story, Zetsu can take off his plant-thing, evaporate it somehow, if he so pleases. He's awesomely genetically enhanced like that. There's no particular reason except I think he ought to be able to walk around unburdened like a normal person, at least some of the time (and also if he couldn't, he would stand out massively amongst a group of eight other experiments whose animal characteristics are mostly small).

3) I highly suggest listening to the soundtrack of "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron" when thinking of this fanfiction. A lot of my inspiration songs come from that CD, particularly the songs "Homeland," "Sound The Bugle" and "Run Free." All these songs can be found on Youtube, FYI. All of them attribute some of their lyrics and rhythms to the concept of freedom, which Sakura all but worships.

I hope Kakashi's explanation cleared up any questions of "why do the boys like Sakura?" and…well, I should be in bed by now, and so I'm too tired to think of any other comments. Enjoy, and if you have any questions about this chapter, let me know in a review or PM and I'll be glad to tell you.

Ta…Storm


	17. Seventeenth

**EDIT, October 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through to meet the bar of her current writing skills...and then update the story. YAY.

It should be noted that in this point in the story, that is, when I first posted chapter seventeen, I had just finished my freshman year of high school. An eighth grader, and later a high school freshman, wrote the majority of Airborne.

Chapter the Seventeenth.

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January 15th, 3:03 PM…I am…very…blank today. Hm. ...Orochimaru POV

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That secretary of mine _has _to be Satan's wife.

Not because she's nearly as evil as he, oh no! Karin is one of the most annoying, talkative, self-centered, egotistical and _whiny _adults I've ever met. You all know crying toddlers, the ones who stamp their feet and scream when their parents won't buy them their favorite toy. My Karin over yonder is comparable to a dozen of those such toddlers.

She was appointed my secretary not long after she was hired onto my team of special scientists here. The way I gave her that second position was May twentieth, 2001. About nine in the morning, I should think. For a thirty-year-old, in her prime, she has a blade-sharp intellect, though not enough imagination to fill my elementary school lunchbox. If she weren't such a rotten, pretentious bitch, this woman could have become the country's first female president. But even if she tried such a thing now, I wouldn't vote for her. She brought my world crashing down onto my head like a falling sky not too long ago, and I'm quite irritated about the event.

You see, a day or two ago, on the morning of the 13th, I believe, Karin came into my office saying that the male experiments' collars had all come off within the same minute or two, the cameras that had been on Zetsu and Kisame's shock collars broke, and all other signals went blank. This meant that the collars were all broken so thoroughly that they could no longer function. They could track and they could not deliver shock punishments. And they had to be _quite_ smashed and crushed not to function.

Karin came in and told me this happened, but only after she assured me that Kabuto, who first gave her the information, was sitting in his office, drooling stupidly over his keyboard and not doing anything productive about this new predicament. She also made notes about how smoothly she'd been running my office matters during this catastrophe of Sakura having run away, and was doing her absolute best to figure out a way to reel the experiments in again.

Her plan was amusingly morbid...would you like to know what it was? Hush now, I'll tell you: "Shoot them. Kill them all off as fast as possible. We can create more. Yuugao and I have come up with a cell manipulation technique that can create fully developed infant organisms within one month, if we fuse human embryos with some kind of amphibian. Those nine running around now are lost, Director. My suggestion is to make sure they're taken out of the picture before the public finds out."

I think of this word-for-word recollection of her, and I know exactly what this meant. I could read Karin like an open book with colored captions. I knew without even thinking that Kabuto, given another five minutes or so to collect himself, would come up with some plan that could and would save me billions, and that Karin would stand in the corner frowning and flustered and making a great, grand hullabaloo about not being Chambers' savior.

She was expecting to be hit with something once she gave me the bad news, and oh, gods above, I wanted to, but she was judging my reaction carefully. Karin is smart as a whip and can manage funds like a Wall Street accountant, but give her an inch of your reaction and she'll take a mile out of it. It was easy to smooth my reaction. Especially since Karin fears my reactions. I haven't the foggiest why!

I sat there with a cool frown and told her, "Killing off our experiments is completely out of the question, Karin, and should any of them be gunned down, I'll be casting suspicious glances at you before anyone else. No, we'll just have to make this a sort of forced 'search and rescue' mission, and perform it with our own men. Our own half-human men didn't do their original recovery job with Number 9. We will send trained professionals to hunt them and bring them back here where they belong. Whatever the males plan to do with their new freedom, or even if they choose to sit and wait to be called…it doesn't matter. We'll get them back." That speech had lasted a minute at most. Then I raised my brows to show some of my irritation with her—which wasn't faked—and waved my hand, gesturing for her to leave. Shocked into silence, Karin left my office.

Once her footsteps had faded, well after that point, actually, I picked up my nearest pen, a small thing of blue ink and BIC origin, and stuck that skinny little fucker right into my mouth.

Fucking _God, _my fury had to have some kind of outlet. I chewed, chewed, chewed like a dog on that damned thing! I chewed till it came in half and ink dribbled out my mouth and my teeth felt as though someone had punched them in. Augh!

Then I was calm again.

I threw away the remains of the pen, cleaned up the ink spatters, brushed my teeth in my private bathroom, and turned on my laptop, preparing to check my messages. Viktor or Romanov, ("Vik" among peers) an employee at the secret laboratory in Moscow, was due to have a webcam conversation with me in the next ten minutes.

I'd already told him that I was expecting some trouble with my Number-9-rescue operation, and he graciously offered to send over a few mercenaries who'd dealt with wild, unpredictable animals before. Viktor, that strange Russian rat, must have guessed the whole thing would go awry anyway.

And the first thing he'd say, I'd bet my entire corporation, will be, "What are you going to do when the common people see your experiments?"

Well, "screaming and shooting" would probably be what the common people are going to do. It's what they did when humans first saw foreign people, when peasants first saw people they thought were witches, and it's what they'll do when they see a flying teenage girl. What _I'm_ going to do is go to Congress—and Congress only, not any small, local law-making body—and tell them my corporation has been creating genetically enhanced creatures for at least a decade. I'm going to tell them this, and tell them not to worry, that the experiments were created for America's safety, to be their protectors, to halt all and any wars. I will tell Congress to broadcast messages that the experiments mean no harm, and if they're seen, you must stay away from them while assigned squads try to capture them. It will be an affair in which the public continues to shuffle and fearfully cry out while I calmly give them facts. It'll be a tough time for us all, I'm sure.

Yes, yes, my good sirs and madams, I realize you're thinking that creating genetic experiments is probably against the law. Yes, it is. Studying genetics is one thing, Using genetics to make an organism is completely different, and admitting that I did this would earn me several lifetimes in jail, and I can only guess what the government would decide to do to my experiments.

Thank goodness for espionage, though. Espionage and a smidge of slyness can always help.

By espionage I mean planting my own politicians into Congress and the House of Representatives. By slyness I mean paying my political friends to coax the government into passing the bills that _I _believe will help the country.

(Don't worry, my friends, I'm a fellow American, and a proud one. I vetoed the Orphan Works Act, and some sixty percent of the vetoing was done by my own people. So give me a quick thank you, if you please. I deserve it. Come, now.)

And so by having my touch inside the White House and all its branches, eighty percent of the time I can keep a certain bill from being passed.

Why yes, it would be wise to be nice to me.

My power rivals the President of the United States, you see, (a secretary of the Navy once said "Power corrupts; absolute power is kind of neat." Haha!) but I'm a nice person. I want to help America, so you'd best pick up your trash, stop destroying animal habitats and driving drunk. Or I will pass the bill that says if you do those things more than once your local law-making body has the power to shoot you dead.

I do not enjoy drunk drivers. Any time I see one, I hope that this is their first and only experience with that behavior. Because if it's their second or third or twentieth, I'll be wishing you drive into a polluted lake and drown and have your skin contaminated by toxic wastes. And my wishes become truth.

What was I saying before. Ah, gracious me, how time flies when you're thinking about troubling things.

I am expecting some trouble from the government, though. Even though I can almost surely keep myself, my corporation and my experiments alive, it's going to be nasty to tell the world what I've done. (I imagine some animal rights activists are going to be wanting my head on a platter for being a bit firm with my experiments' training, and some government folks are going to want the same thing.) With my power to keep "certain bills from being passed," which is one power among many, I will keep myself and my corporation out of jail. I will get away with genetic experimentation and the country will be forced to accept it whether they enjoy it or not. And those animal rights activists are going to have to shut up, because I'd rather not hear their complaints about how mean I treated my pets.

I can't help it that strenuous training is needed to make a person or creature strong. My experiments would never be as adaptable and strong as they are now without the life I've given them.

If Sakura wasn't electrocuted with her shock collar all her life, she wouldn't be as patient and tough as she is. And if the males hadn't been pit against each other in fights every few days, they wouldn't be as resourceful in tracking and fighting as they are now. And certainly if we hadn't been so merciless, Sakura would not have been so determined and clever, and so successful. Brilliant girl.

My heart does clench a bit, though, thinking about their lives. I am not a cruel man. I would not kick a puppy if given the chance, no matter what some of my employees may whisper. But I could not risk the softness it might have brought. My creations must be fierce, adaptable, willing to accept pain.

'_Viktor, I may need to skip my internet conversation with you today,' _I thought, shaking my head. My Internet program had opened up now, and immediately I began scanning my near-endless list of email addresses. _'First I may need Karin and old Danzo to brush up on their own law skills…I'll be needing the most fantastic lawyer available. And it's one of those two bitching rats, unfortunately.' _

I needed to inform those two that one of them needed to represent me in the case that I would take directly to the Supreme Court. The other would group together as many mercenaries as they could find. Iran and England are good places to find those sorts of people, I hear. I'll need those sorts of people—oh, and the rubber suits that Yashamaru was sending me from somewhere in Panama, those will be needed more than ever. Aren't those ready yet? Oh, it's so strange to think I'm going through all of this trouble because of Number 9. Before the discovery of Sakura's true thoughts and plans, I had always thought it would be Numer 8 or 5—those energetic blonde ones—who would cause me such incredible trouble. But it was the mute, the meek, the little girl. What an odd twist of fate. This kind of thing should be put on a fortune cookie.

The whole ordeal she had caused was just strange. Strange that we had to send all the other experiments after her, and strange that they suddenly got free of their shock-and-tracking collars just after they pinned her down outside of Portland. Strange that they got free of those collars right before capturing her and then letting her go. (_That _is one mystery we still have yet to solve.) Strange that they would often _purr _and not growl when near her. (I sort of always expected them to be affectionate to her anyway; she's the most adorable thing anyone's ever seen. I've had an urge to hug her to death myself, and I think Kabuto has, too. In fact, I think Kabuto really does have some strange infatuation for Number 9. Oops, off-topic.)

Anyhow, the country was going to have to prepare itself for a shock when those strange things come up in its face. For both the fact that the experiments exist, and for the damage they may accidentally cause while running free.

Yes. Yes, those nine creatures needed to be recaptured _now. _

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January 15th, noonish or maybe 2:00 in the afternoon, I guess? ...Kisame POV

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"Because it's made of water and milk."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah. The sky's blue because it's made of floating water and the clouds are milk, spilled in weird shapes."

"Not that I've really got the right to talk about IQ, but you're seriously a dumbass. Read a book or something."

Naruto actually believes the sky is made of water and the clouds are made of milk. He's not joking in the least. I'm really…is there a word for this? Astounded, I think fits. Disappointed, too. Is there a word where you're disappointed and astounded but you're about to fall over laughing? Because I was doing that.

My fox-brother and I were standing knee-deep in the freezing water of the nearest river. Itachi sat near us combing his hair through with his fingers, his black cloak looking unnaturally shiny like he'd washed it without us seeing or something. Zetsu was on the riverbank across from him, laying on the grass with his feet in the water, probably drinking through some weird plant process I don't know. Everyone else was sitting at the edge of the trees about thirty feet away on a little hill, watching us or sleeping or cloud-watching. Relaxing, mainly.

But back to me and Naruto. We're standing there in the water, messing around because we're like that. We're hoping Neji will come down with us—Naruto likes to play around with stony Neji, always has—or anyone to come down here, really. He's having fun with me, sure, but the more the merrier is how he sees it. Naruto's a very social creature. I think it's just because he's blonde. Karin always said blondes were happier, peppier and stuff, and she's not usually wrong. She's a horrendous human being but she's not usually wrong.

"Well, ask Sakura or Itachi, they'll tell you I'm right!" the young experiment snorted, crossing him arms. (Well, okay, he's not that young, I'm only six or seven months older than him, but I…whatever.) "Water and milk. If I'm wrong, you can slap me across the face in front of everybody. I won't even defend myself."

"Itachi wouldn't want us to bother him when he's grooming himself. And Sakura's recovering from shock. Who else can we ask?" I asked, ignoring for the billionth time the chill that spread all around me from the river water.

Naruto cocked his head and his fox-ears perked confusedly. He didn't seem to be bothered by the cold water that much. "What, shock from seeing Kakashi's face?"

"Yeah, that too."

See, I was half-awake when Sasori and Kakashi risked fatal electrocution about an hour ago, went near our favorite angel, and were lucky enough to come away smiling and with no sizzling burns. I wonder if Sakura would have had room in her brain to think of electrocuting Kakashi when he pulled down his scarf and showed her his face. I was only half-awake and feeling really lazy sitting against my tree, but I know what I saw.

I've only seen Kakashi's face twice, when we were in the same medical room together. The scientists have to pull his scarves down to put a thermometer in his mouth, and also just so it can be generally out of the way, and Kakashi hates that for some reason. He looks really good, doesn't have scars or anything except for that one over his crimson eye, and he's just shy about people seeing his face. It's the only thing in the world he's shy about. The scarves are...psychologically comforting or something. And it's only natural that he would at last want Sakura to see his hidden face. I wasn't surprised that he would _do _it, that he would want to be just as open with her as the rest of us are trying to be, but what got me was how _easily _he did it, without a single sign of the fear he's always had.

And Sakura? Well, I really thought she'd compose herself and comment politely on some part of his face, but she just stared and didn't say anything. After fifteen seconds or so Kakashi pulled his scarf back up over his mouth and said, "And that's a sign of trust. No offense at all to you, but I don't know if you can recognize one. Please recognize this. I trust you, even if you don't return the feeling."

Kakashi got up then and kicked Naruto, who was trying some prank on the sleeping Deidara. Sakura then jumped up to the nearest tree branch to be a little bit up and away from us. And she's been sitting there ever since, not saying anything. I can understand that, too. The first time I saw Kakashi's face, my eyes were wide for the next forty-five minutes and I almost didn't notice when Karin yelled at me to move onto the weighing scale. I mean, it's really surprising. His face is just...damn.

"Well…maybe Sasori would know." my blonde friend suggested. I shook my head and kicked at fishy-tadpole animal that was nibbling my bare foot. "He's sleeping. Might sting us if we wake him up."

"Uhh…Neji knows a couple of weird things. Maybe he knows this." I pondered that sentence for a few seconds. Neji was sleeping a few feet away from Sasori, with his head propped up on a tree root and his legs crossed in his sleep. But his brown feline ears were perked up. This made me think he was only resting, and not actually asleep.

"Hey, hey!" Naruto slapped my arm urgently. "Hey, I just thought of something!"

"You thought something? How does it feel?"

"Get fried in hell, fishstick. I was thinkin' about how you and Sakura were in that power box thing together right before she flew away, and how you told us you felt your heart starting and stopping three times. I thought that maybe she'll think of you differently 'cause you felt the same pain."

That had occurred to me. That was one of the first things that occurred to me after the electric current faded. The first thought was pain, which didn't go away for several hours, the second was, well, a total _lack_ of thought, because I went unconscious while we were still being electrocuted. I woke up just before she flew off, and I cried out as though that would be enough to keep her with us, where she belonged. I fell unconscious again a little later, woke up in a surgery room, and fell asleep again when anesthesia—or is it called anesthetic?—coursed into by arm via some cold tube thing.

_Then _I woke up and realized that maybe Sakura thought of me differently. I was thinking, slowly because the anesthetic was still making me woozy, that because I was holding her during that experience and didn't strangle her, that I was in agony along with her, that the angel would think that I was a little merciful. That I decided to be in pain with her rather than kill her. And that...makes me cringe. The last bit does. Only in my ugliest, most horrific nightmares would I kill Sakura. God above, I would never.

"Yeah, I thought that, too. I'm waiting for some better time to remind her about it. I wouldn't talk to anyone a half hour after they've seen Kakashi's face."

Wistfully, actually sadly, Naruto swished his tailtip around in the river, swirling it in little patterns. "I wanna talk to her." he said sadly.

I could give no answer. All I could do was sympathize. "Who doesn't?" I said, trying to sound a little cheerful. "That's the most perfect creation on earth over there. So perfect that god couldn't make her. Only science could." I could hear the fondness in my own voice. I didn't care that I sounded so blatantly...atheist, I suppose. Who knows? What I said might have been true.

"You think she knows that?" my blonde friend asked, sounding genuinely curious. "That she's perfect…or even better than that? Cause, you know, she knows everything, almost." I shook my head. I was looking at her, sitting cross-legged in her tree branch above Sasori and Deidara and staring confusedly at something I could never see.

When I answered, I knew that I was right without even thinking. "No. That's one of the things Sakura doesn't know. She knows everything but herself, and how to react to others wanting her. We still have to teach her that."

Something in my words must have either snapped something inside Naruto or just really inspired him. Whatever the reason, he leaped out of the water towards her. One foot was on the cold, grassy shore when I grabbed his tail and pulled him back. The kid barely staggered back onto his feet, almost fell flat on his ass in the river, and made a ridiculous show of it. I don't know how, but only Itachi seemed to even notice that sudden, freaky movement. Everyone else stayed still and calm.

"What were you doing?" I scolded without bothering to be patient with him. "I thought even you knew it's gonna take slow steps to get to her. If you take anything but slow steps she's just gonna hate you even more. Plus you'll get electrocuted so bad you'll turn colorblind or something."

The boy's ears drooped but he kept a defiant expression. "You don't know that. If I ran up there and did whatever I felt like doing—"

"Obscene nuzzling and cuddling," I guessed with a raised, satiric brow.

"Yeah, yeah. You don't know if she'd totally kill me for that. You haven't tried. And you _can't _try because you weigh like three hundred and fifty pounds and her bones would be smashed if you did. And we've only got like two days before we get back to the lab and I'm not waiting till our dying moment for something to happen."

The sound I made was sort of a sigh and sort of a disappointed growling thing. "How can you be a year older than her and one-tenth as calm and patient? If you do that, I'll be the first to come charging and throwing you off the nearest cliff. If she doesn't do that first. If Deidara doesn't explode you first and if Itachi doesn't fry your brain with hypnosis."

I sounded just like a teacher, and I knew it and I hope it made the message get into the kid's head faster. My hand, still holding Naruto's tail, released it. "What's the first thing you ever learned?" I asked. After half a second of thought he said, "That Chambers Inc. sucks."

"After that." But inside I was kind of laughing.

"They brought Kakashi in the room to sniff me and see if he'd kill me, because older male animals kill babies sometimes. But he leaned down and told me how to share, and said that I always should, except with the Chambers people. I remember that even though I was…was a month old at most."

I nodded. "They let Kakashi come and see every new experiment except Sakura. And he always told the baby how to share, and told them that the other experiments were good, were friends.

And the scientists are retarded so they can't understand us when we say things, so they don't know that we can share and stuff like that."

"Are you just gonna tell me that I need to share? I am, dipstick! It's just that it'd be nice to get my turn first."

"Well, maybe you won't."

"Well, I talked to her personally before anyone else, last night in her tree, so maybe I already _did." _

That kid's a real smartass. But he's such an awesome friend.

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This chapter is BARELY long enough to be split into two chapters, my nearly-traditional two-for-one chapter. But of course I'm going to wait a day or two before posting the other half. See, like any other fanfiction author, I am a massively hungry review monster, so I'm going to enjoy the luxury of getting fat on reviews till…well since I can't really burst from reviews I'm probably just going to keep getting fat.

One thing I hope you noticed this chapter: Orochimaru seemed quite calm, then he got so mad that he chewed on a pen so thoroughly he broke it and had to brush the ink out of his teeth. Oh-so-bipolar.

Also don't go giving me some jazz on the things that Orochimaru said about having his people in Congress and whatnot. I can guess that some of it is wrong or impossible. Too bad. I haven't studied anything governmental since I reviewed the three branches of government in seventh grade. And I don't really find that subject interesting so I used the best of my current knowledge, which I hope is decent enough, instead of researching it.

Ta…Storm


	18. Eighteenth

**EDIT, November 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through to meet the bar of her current writing skills...and then update the story. YAY.

Here's the second half of the two-for-one chapter sale. And congratulations to **silverymoonfire, **who is my three-hundredth reviewer. This one's for you!

666

January 15th, 5:34 PM so says mah laptop clock! (Ino POV)

666

"_Welcome, Lilac-chan. You have seven new emails."_

"Squee!"

I love my laptop. It's like, the most amazing Dell you ever saw and I paid fifty extra dollars to have it colored pink instead of the usual computer-nerd black. I have a pink laptop and it is my luuuv. And despite it being my luuuv I kept calm because otherwise it'd be difficult to sit down and talk to Tenten. She said she wanted to IM today around 5:30 my time. Her friend Lee (I swear he belongs in a glee club) did something really cool that she's just gotta tell me.

My Yahoo Messenger screen came up, and my _other _custom feature appeared: a little voice-program-whatever-thingy that says "welcome, Lilac-chan" to me! I had the people at the warehouse or whatever put it on, since Japanese things are just my life, and I can't go a day without calling one of my friends "-chan." Clickin' around on my lovely mailbox, I saw two Le Stupid Spam letters and four from various friends. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to be popular, unlike some people. Ahaha~

It really pays to be known around campus, especially on the campus of the University Miami. God, I love it here. I can't wait to get my associate's and then hurry the heck up to the other...vocational...whatever-school! And then I can be the best hairstylist EVAR! But it's just whatevs for now. Right now, I've gotta talk to Tenten-chan.

On our super-special-secret-hot-usable-for-us-only chatroom, me and her could talk about whatever and not worry about people prying or turning into next class period's gossip sandwich.

"DaggerSheath is signed on." Woot! Ten's already on.

Oh, and cause you don't know cause you're dumb, Tenten is the best internet friend I've had for a long long time. She moved from China when she was little, and she lives in this little Canadian town called Abbotsford, (lol she's Chinese Canadian, that's almost as weird as Korean Irish.) She likes to hang around this native Canadian nerd named Lee Rock. Or Rock Lee. I don't really get which is first. But Ten likes him. Oh, and she also knows karate like nobody's business. She says she wants to make a living being a martial arts instructor specializing in throwing knives and daggers and stuff. I don't think she'll make that much money but she said the same thing about me being a hairstylist. And when I realized she was probably right I was like "derp." But it's what I wanna do, so there.

I started typing. I was lik

_Lilac-chan: Wazzup Ten? : p_

_DaggerSheath: I started teaching my new tae kwon do class today! Most of the students are a couple years younger than me and this thirteen-year-old redhead kid accidentally hit me with a board. _

_Lilac-chan: ?_

_DaggerSheath: You know those ones that you chop in half with ur hand? He screwed up freakishly and threw the board at me and it almost broke my wrist. But if I hadnt blocked it the board would have smashed my face off _

_Lilac-chan: OH GOD _

_DaggerSheath: Ya but the kid apologized like crazy and it doesn't hurt so bad now_

_Lilac-chan: Y do u teach that stuff anyway? I thot u wanted to learn a new class not teach 1. _

_DaggerSheath: Yeah well I need the money, okay? You've got your lovely little college dorm down there but my mom and me live in an apartment we have to shaft money into every month and it's a shit-ton of money. I'm skipping my second semester, but when I go into college next fall (a year late...) I'm gonna need even more for tuition. Honestly I would love to ask Lee to lend a bit of cash but him and his dad are always goin on their ridiculous wildlife trips. I cant ask them for $$ because they're using it on falconry gloves and weird animal things like that.  
_

_Lilac-chan: Come live w/me! Every night I make like two hundred dollars in tips at my waitress job at Houlihan's! No joke! Call my manager and ask!_

_DaggerSheath: U actually think me and my mom can take a trip out of Canada and ACROSS AMERICA to Florida to live with you? First of all we wouldn't be able to pay for GAS to get that far. Don't get me started girl.  
_

_Lilac-chan: Well I can send you some money at least? _

_DaggerSheath: ...Maybe. I say I want to ask Lee but I can't, but to actually be able to ask somebody feels so rude. I don't think we are quite that desperate yet.  
_

_Lilac-chan: OK fine…_

_Lilac-chan: N-e-way u said u were going to tell me about this thing Lee saw…why do you still hang out with that kid? _

_DaggerSheath: We took karate class together since I moved to the US! He's kind and helpful and modest and loves animals like crazy. And he's not a "kid" Ino he's only like a few months younger than me. He turned 18 in November and he's graduating high school this June. _

_Lilac-chan: Hey that means you two will start college at the same time! you can be freshman n00bs together!  
_

_DaggerSheath: I dunno, would i be a freshman if I was a year older than most of the high school graduates?  
_

_Lilac-chan: I guess I dunno either but I know ill graduate before u cause I'm older than u HAHAHAHAHAHAH_

_DaggerSheath: U don't even know if you are. Even if you did the math you'd probably do it wrong and find out our geometric probability instead of our ages._

_Lilac-chan: Whut_

_DaggerSheath: Geez ur stupid. Back to Lee. I just scrolled back up and you were talking about why I like Lee..._

_Lilac-chan: Oh yeah I remember whut I was gonna say...If he loves animals is he into bestiality? _

_DaggerSheath: U are a slut. Ur a million times more into bestiality than him._

_Lilac-chan: Well EXCUUUSE me for wanting to try new things! : / _

_DaggerSheath: I'm not even gonna mention what you tried to do with that cow. I'm just gonna tell u what I wanted to tell u about this thing Lee saw. _

_DaggerSheath: Okay here it is: U know how Lee and his dad are always going off and tagging wild animals and making sure they're not wandering into toxic waste dumps and stuff? _

_Lilac-chan: Ya...they make me think of the wild Thornberrys...  
_

_DaggerSheath: (omg loved that show...) Well he and his dad were trying to tag this gigantic eagle a couple days ago, but it flew down towards them and it was bigger than a person. Lee swears it wasn't an eagle. It WAS a person._

_Lilac-chan: A flying person_

_DaggerSheath: Yeah_

_Lilac-chan: How could they think that a bird was a person? Does he know that people cant fly?  
_

_DaggerSheath: I've told you tons about Lee! You know he wouldn't lie! And I'm not done. They shot it with enough tranquilizer to put an elephant to sleep and it didn't even slow down._

_Lilac-chan: Bird on drugs_

_DaggerSheath: Don't make jokes till I'm done. They got one of those capture nets, you know what those are?_

_Lilac-chan: umm maybe on animal planet...once...what is it?_

_DaggerSheath: *headdesk* Okay, it's like a little pillow. You toss it on the ground and press a button on a remote. It blows up into this frigging gigantic pillow that you could put a bus on. And if anything lands on it, a bunch of wires shoot inward from the edges and trap whatever fell on top of it. It was first made to catch people jumping out of parachutes but it helps for catching a bird falling out of the sky too_

_Lilac-chan: sounds badass. They should put that in Assassin's Creed. _

_DaggerSheath: Pff whatever. Okay, they shot the bird with tranquilizer and it dove down at them. Not falling like it was drugged, it was diving at them like it was angry and like it hadn't been affected by tranquilizer at all. And then it was right on top of them in like half a second! It kicked Lee's dad onto the capture net and he got trapped on it, and then it kicked Lee onto the net too! And the wires shot out over them so they could barely see what the thing was through all the netting._

_Lilac-chan: of course..._

_DaggerSheath: well what they saw wasn't a bird! It was a teenage girl! she was skinny and was wearing shorts and a short sleeve shirt...like it's NOT a twenty-degree Canadian winter outside. She had pink hair and silver wings._

_Lilac-chan: Wha? _

_DaggerSheath: And he heard this crinkly sound and it turned out the bird-girl was eating Cheetos from a little bag he'd brought on the car ride out there_

_Lilac-chan: Awww angel eating cheetos _

_DaggerSheath: And then she flew away. A while later the wires retracted back so they could climb off the capture net. They found that she'd took the Cheeto bag and a map of the west coast of America and Canada. They think she's traveling around that area._

_Lilac-chan: mmkay so your friend and his dad got attacked by a girl with wings and she stole their cheetos and a map_

_DaggerSheath: Well yeah...that's what they saw. They have no idea what it actually was, but that's just what they saw, k?_

_Lilac-chan: Well come on Ten it sounds like something from the Sci-fi channel. And not even good sci-fi. Are you sure they weren't drunk? Weird shit happens when you drink!_

_DaggerSheath: Ino, Lee and his dad don't drink. They're really really against it. Frankly I am too and hearing about your drunken escapades makes me disgusted_

_Lilac-chan: Geez excuse me for being a college student and having fun_

_DaggerSheath: you can have fun without having sex with a stranger three times a week and getting high off your ass till you drive a car into a tree. That's not "fun" Ino that's just a really retarded way to ruin your life and die. Sometimes I feel ashamed of myself saying my best friend is the kind of person who likes to do those things. Not to mention astounded at how many people have been dumb enough to try those things.  
_

_DaggerSheath: There I said it _

_Lilac-chan: goddamn_

_DaggerSheath: Yeah I thought that when you told me that story about the threesome you participated in. "College fun" my Asian ass. _

_DaggerSheath: You know I don't feel so bad about saying this now since its pretty likely you'll forget anyway. Remember Ino you'r the girl who can't rmember what she ate for breakfast._

_Lilac-chan: Special K, you pretentious bitch_

_DaggerSheath: You hate Special K. It's not "sweet" enough for ya. Ha.  
_

_Lilac-chan: U know what? I aint taking that bait sister. Ur just trying to distract me from Lee anyway. U sure Lees not just trying to get u to com with him on an animal rescue thing so u 2 can have HAPPY TIME TOGETHAR? _

_DaggerSheath: Some of us don't always think of sleeping with our male friends, Ino. _

_Lilac-chan: Tenten ur so obstinate. _

_DaggerSheath: The word is abstinent girlfriend. And Ino you're the opposite of a virgin  
_

_Lilac-chan: :D_

_DaggerSheath: I also wanted to tell you about this rat my mom found in the garage but I gotta go. I have a class of ten-year-olds to teach at 6:00. _

_Lilac-chan: G'night, don't let the face-kickers bite...  
_

"DaggerSheath is signed off." My computer's sexy robot voice said.

Aww. Talking to Tenten is fun. Even if she insults me. Well she hardly ever does it so I can't be angry at her for it. And its' not like I'm some slut going to every party I can to get drunk as soon as possible. It's a once-in-a-while thing but I just have to much fun on those days I guess I talk about it a ton...and Tenten gets a wrong impression. Sad day! One day I'll meet her in person and we can go to a bar and drink cranberry juice together, no matter how many guys offer us real drinks! That'll show her how admirable I am.

And Lee's "angel kicked me and stole my Cheetos" story was about as believable as me landing a date with my manager, Mr. Yamato. That weird dude totally liked Tenten, always had, since they met in karate class when they were seven. Poor Tenten. She hadn't been in America long enough to recognize a creeper in the making, and now she thinks the guy is like a dorky God. Yeah he sounds really nice, even sweet, but she showed me a pic of him one time and he's just uuugly! Okay maybe not that ugly. But I would totally not date him. Like, ew. Yeah he's great for helping animals and junk but he's just blegh to look at.

Whatever. I had to meet with Ami tonight. We go dancing at 7:00…and go home whenever we wake up.

No drinks, though.

666

January 15th, uh, I'm assuming around 6:00 PM since the sun's going down and it's winter and Earth's axis is…well, what do you care. ...Sakura POV

666

These guys are really good at creating a façade of politeness. And creepy affection that reminds me of pedophilia. (Not that I'm too young and they're too old, just that feeling of _wrong _that is associated with it. We've been hanging out in this area of Canadian wilderness since we woke up around noon. Most everyone's been sleeping or resting, hardly moving except to change sleeping poses or kick someone who's too close for comfort. Those kicks look too angry to be playful to me. So I must now categorize them as both pedos and instigators of domestic violence. Argh, wait, that'd mean they're married to each other. Now, what kind of violence is only between friends? Assault and battery? Hmm. Oh, getting off-track.

Okay, the way they interact with each other looks more violent than playful to me, but then again...what the heck do I know about social behavior? As much as I listened to the scientists in my past years, knowledge of proper behavior was one of my weakest suits and smallest mental information files. I had terrible sources, you understand. The only normal people I've met in my life are the ones I met about a week ago: Hidan and Kakuzu. And the whole world obviously isn't like them. These experiments are _obviously _not like them. I don't know what's truly going through their heads.

I don't know if they're pretending to be a happy group of friends or if they really do hate each other, regard each other as strange animals trampling on their personal space or territory. I've heard that back when two male experiments were put together in a white room to fight, their blows were always aimed to kill, whereas a mal against me usually meant they would be aiming to injure or cripple. Also, they might just be gathering together and acting cordial for a common purpose. Not a rare practice in wartime.

So…if I'm lucky, I might be able to force one of them to snap, and while one of them is trying to go for me, another will be angered and attack the first one. But I wouldn't know how to make them snap in the first place, so this is just another random, probably-not-gonna-happen possibility. I've got a dumpster full of those.

Life sucks. Almost wish I could trade with y-no. No. This is horrific enough for me, anyone else wouldn't be able to survive it. I don't think I could do that to a person...chah. Look at me, defending people as though they've defended me or something. I have no reason to protect people. But I feel that I would, if given the chance. Wait, wait, what was I thinking about before this? Damn you, thought tangents! My Achilles heel!

Oh, yes. Death. There's something terrible about realizing your thoughts were almost humorous for a moment and having to go back to something somber and...and like this. It's like the reverse of a joke. Thinking again about these monsters just waiting to rip me to pink meaty ribbons. And I wish they would just stop looking at me. It unnerves me so. It twists my stomach like nothing else in the world.

Sometimes they glance up and back quickly, like they don't want me to know, like they're being swift and crafty enough that I won't notice their stares. Uh yeah, no. I can see you half a mile off, guys, don't overestimate yourselves. Other times they don't bother to mask it at all. Once, half an hour back, Kisame and Naruto were standing in the river, soothing their feet and ankles or something, while I sat in a tree branch and pretended to be lost in thought. I caught sight of Naruto suddenly trudging up out of the water towards my tree.

He only took two steps before Kisame pulled him back, and nobody but Itachi look over or took any notice of it. I kept my expression calm and pretended I didn't notice, when in fact that sudden incident had scared the living hell out of me and made the hairs on my arms and back of my neck stand straight up. At least I kept my feathers from bristling, or my entire body from flinching. That was good.

And then there was the time a few hours ago when I just _felt _eyes on me, felt the unpleasant "God knows all" sensation and looked around with a fake-lazy expression to find my stalker. My eyes, flawless eyes, found Neji, and I almost wished they hadn't. I found Neji, laying under a nearby tree, propped up on one elbow and looking at me with his brown, furry tail swinging like a cat preparing to pounce on something. We stared each other down for awhile, during which I got a good long look at his ghostly eyes, before his tail went slack on his head and he lay down again. It had been a staring contest and I had won. Thank goodness...

There've been nine or ten incidents like these over the day. All experiments but Kisame have looked up at me once or twice during the day, or tried to come closer, or made a noise to get my attention on them. None of their stares had been predatory, though. Even Itachi's nightmarish eyes (I looked him in the eyes again! This is just a regular miracle now.) did not hold the terrible glaze of obsessive need for death that I always felt from them. No, he looked only curious and longing. May people would have been convinced by his face.

That scares me. Their expressions are so finely hidden that I'm almost convinced they _don't _want to rip me up. How long will it be before I accidentally do fall for one of those tricks? I don't know if I'd rather fall victim to it here, alone in the wild, or near the lab where the scientists might witness my death.

Sasori and Deidara were standing up now…talking…What in the world?

I can't understand them. I'm hearing low growling sounds. Little purrs. Animals noises. How can that be? I'm within perfect hearing distance, I'm not mistaking anything. Neji, near them, laying down, sweeps his tail over Sasori's leg to get the scorpion experiment's attention. Neji added in his two cents, in a tone that was a little, uh, less deep than Sasori's. Either his voice is a little less manly or he's just talking rather happily right now. I can't tell. I'm frozen up here. Completely blocked out. Oh please oh please don't let them ask me anything.

Knock on wood (God! Frigging! Dammit!) Sasori looked up at me, his tail curling. Curling, waiting for a chance to unfurl? Was it...questioning? I took a chance and parried his words, whatever they were, with an easy question of my own. Hopefully it could apply to a lot of things he could be saying. Hopefully I don't end up looking like some retarded foreign tourist who doesn't speak the native tongue.

"So you want to leave now? I tried to sound casual and unbothered and it looks like my façade paid off. Sasori nodded, and his mouth moved a little, and I watched the movements of his smooth lips fiercely. But it didn't do me any good. I didn't see the word "yes" on his lips and his animalistic grunt-like confirmation still sounded like a completely different language to me. His English or my English is just _gone. _But it would just make things complicated to let him know this.

"Whenever you're ready," I said. I was laying down on the tree branch at that moment, my shoulders and head against the trunk and one leg hanging over the branch. I moved the other leg so that they both hung off the branch. I could jump off, jump to safety, at any time.

Sasori smiled at me, a smooth upward curve of his lips that I couldn't help but follow. That smile, that easy, pleased look in his eyes, completely unbothered posture, it's an expression that all the experiments used on me at some point of other. _That, _more than anything, that mockery of an affectionate gaze, is what really makes my stomach squirm with heat. I could never feel that again and it would be too soon. Sasori looked away from me and stepped toward Kakashi, lying on the ground with his arm supporting his head. The poor wolverine suddenly had a foreign tail jabbing him in the stomach which I imagine is a terrible way to be woken from sleep, even if you've got a supposedly thick winter jacket on. Kakashi has just proven that it makes you yelp like a little girl.

And that's funny, but also curious. Is Sasori really _allowed _to do that to Kakashi? Will Kakashi smack him for it later? Cut him? Or are they truly buddies so that smacking each other around a bit is acceptable and even humorous? I don't know! Behaviors! Y U NO make sense!

Kakashi said something, too, and his English was gone as well. It sounded like, "hrrrr" like a kitten or...or a baby dragon or something. "Hrr, hrrr, mmmn." Or something like that. It sound silly when I try to convert it into some clear-cut onomatopoeia. But once Kakashi had his say, everyone else started to rouse and gather together. They really were going to leave now.

Which way will we go, I wonder? We were kind of moving as vaguely southwest-ish as possible to get to this place from Buffalo Jump. They can't really be so idiotic as to think if we _kinda _go in the right direction, we'll eventually find the exact spot where the lab is? They must have some idea where they're going. Some way of tracking progress. A scent trail? A map? ...What if they have a map? Or stole a GPS? Is that better or worse than the idea that they're just following my scent, the way I came to Buffalo Jump myself?

I don't like that idea. That reinforces what Deidara told me: that I can literally be tracked anywhere by scent. Well, if that was true, then I should recognize the route. Some unique trees, a town I passed. A particular highway. And I haven't so far, so that means this must be a new route. Phew! So they _didn't _just stalk my scent up here like obsessed bloodhound creepers.

So. Map. An object one of them could discreetly look at while I fly over the tree tops. The same tree tops that keep me from looking down and seeing it. And even if want to ask them how they got here, and what their directional idea is now...I can't. I'm stuck. All I can do is keep going vaguely southwest-ish like we were before. And why did we do that, anyway? Was I following the vague flashes of them through the trees or were they following me? This is like the _worst _time for us to have a language barrier appear.

So I bent my knees a bit, opened my wings, and took off straight from the tree branch into the air. It's a good thing that I can do that pretty easily now, taking off into the sky without a running start, I mean. This skill is going to come in handy all my life. All the rest of my life is what I should say, because I'm still wondering if this encounter with the scientists at the place of our birth is going to kill me.

Well, maybe a few of them will die, too. I have the physical strength necessary to break their bones. I could smash their skulls into the ground. And of course electrocute them until their hearts stop or maybe explode. And at least I can say with some confidence that I probably won't be going to hell with them.

666

January the 16th, at sunrise. I'm not even going to try guessing the time. The sun is rising, we've been running for at least ten hours. ...Sasori POV

666

Strangely…I'm hardly tired. Ten hours of running through unfamiliar, freezing wilderness and I'm hardly panting. Hardly cold, either, thanks to my temperature pills. I cringe at swallowing them, though. But I am comfortable, and that is lucky. I cannot say the same for all of my brothers. Kisame looks truly exhausted and his gait is uneven and wobbling. I fear he'll run into a tree soon and after that he probably won't be able to get up and go nearly as fast. But ten more miles or so, my friend, you can do that. I know your strength and it's enough to get there.

Indeed, it's enough to get there. I say this even though I can't judge the route completely. It's not the one we came by the first time. For some reason we've twisted or turned. I don't recognize any landmarks, and we haven't passed any of the towns we passed on our way north to Buffalo Jump. But it doesn't matter. The map we have—I'm assuming Deidara still has it?—isn't needed now. Southwest is all the direction we need for now. If the map is needed, we'll take it out. But for now, everyone is following our new compass.

Sakura is the compass. The center of everything.

We're following _her. _She's flying above us even now, a very visible silhouette against a brightening landscape of clouds. Every time she makes a slight change in direction, we all adjust ourselves to her flight pattern, except for Naruto. One of us usually has to pull him in the new direction, but he's a hopeless pup, so that is no surprise.

I don't know if this is the way Sakura herself took to get to Buffalo Jump. She won't tell us, and her scent would have faded by now, and I don't think even Deidara, whose specialty is tracking, would be able to pick it up in this cruelly cold and windy environment (then again, what the hell do I know about smells in comparison to he?). I, for one, would perceive the scent as gone. Blown away by the fierce winds or icy, black rain. Whether it is or it isn't the way she came, she seems to know where she's going. She must think her changes in direction are so subtle that we hardly notice them. We do. And we follow.

And around sunset yesterday, just before we began running, I was speaking with Deidara, and afterward I noticed a change in her behavior, a new wariness and anxiety I hadn't felt before. It isn't just her usual fear. Whatever it was, it has been bothering me for hours. Sakura is afraid of something, and she will not speak of it to us. She is not showing it to her protectors who love her.

This hurts. All this work to keep her close to us and she still pulls away so violently. Someday we're going to find the remedy to this, and...and? Sakura is diving. Wings pulled in, falling, gone.

_No. _

Kisame tore past me. I could hear him keening his grief. "What if she got shot?" Kisame was, for possibly the first time, _wailing. _"Shot down while flying, what kind of way is that to die? Move, fox-kit! She needs me!" And Naruto, who was running along in front of Kisame, leaped out of the way. Kisame cleared a pile of broken, jagged logs in one leap and kicked off an aging tree to turn a corner, denting the trunk and leaving splinters in the gap.

Naruto and Zetsu behind me couldn't dodge the flying splinters. I could. I went around them and under them and faster and faster to get to my little one. I was barely able to refrain from cursing at Kakashi, who was running too slow and was too big was _in my way._

Before I was able to hear it coming, the air around me vibrated and I felt the oncoming electric bolt. Gravity dropped me down three feet in the air and saved me from a jumping line of blue energy. Sakura's electricity sped over Neji's head and a second tree had its innards crunched and destroyed, and now blackened. Kakashi and Naruto leaped out of the trees before I did and stopped where they were. I was forced to stop with them, at the edge of an absurdly large clearing dotted with ugly gnarled trees that looked out of place and on the verge of a wintry death. Sakura was on the far side and looking into the trees. She had a hand extended in our direction. The thrower of the last lightning bolt and a signal of a threat to make another. We stayed where she wanted us. At least, I did. Zetsu tried to step farther into the clearing.

His movement was heard and Sakura punished him. She jerked her hand again and more energy appeared in her little palm, lines and jagged lines of energy curled into a crackling sphere, and she tossed it over to Zetsu. It ripped the branches from the left side of a tree and tore into the ground by his feet. Now he stayed where he was.

And we all did, for a time. A minute at most. A long, ugly minute where I ground my teeth and _waited. _I had a slim and sorry excuse for patience inside me and it was dissolving quickly. Sakura gestured to us when I was at the end of it. Her fingers curled; she was most definitely becoming us over. Kisame moved first, followed not a moment later by Neji and me. We all crossed over to her. She was still and silent. I cocked my head in her direction, wondering. Sakura's paralyzing fear of us never allows her to turn her back on us. Only a greater enemy could make her do that.

She heard when we were close enough. And she was with a menacing quietness, "Why did you make so much noise?"

Neji looked frightened. His caracal ears pressed down against his skull. He asked for her forgiveness but she wouldn't turn and see it. "You fell out of the sky. We thought you'd...been shot."

The hand that she'd used to fire electricity at us drifted in the air. It no longer pointed at us, behind her, but in front of us into the new barrier of trees. "There's a sniper in the trees over there. I almost _was _shot out of the sky. You can thank sunlight off his badge blinding me. I dived out of his range and from where he is, he can't see us now." She paused. "But he'll probably know we're around since I had to almost shoot you guys in the foot to make you shut up, and electricity isn't quiet." Neji made a sound like a whimper, but Sakura didn't care. "His badge has the Chambers logo on it." Now Neji was quiet.

I looked out into the trees, too to find this sniper. There was no movement, no improper colors, no more glare of sunlight off a badge. But if Sakura said there was a sniper there, then there doubtlessly was one. Her judgment was not to be taken lightly by anyone.

"How far away from here is he?" I murmured. My tail had a mind of its own—it was curling near Sakura's leg, as though it wanted to jerk her out of the way of a bullet—and I was perfectly content to let it use that mind. If I have two minds to protect my speed demon, then I will use them.

"A hundred yards from here, I think. He's equipped. If there's ever been a bullet-proof vest, this man is wearing it. He means to kill us."

"No." My tail snaked gently up the side of her wing. She was trying to subtly pull it back, to not shiver at my touch, so I felt the usual pain of my cub erecting her barrier to me. But I continued. "They would never kill us. They want to capture us. They must know we managed to take our collars off."

"…You were wearing shock collars while I was free." Was this a statement or a question, I wondered? Did she think we were lying?

This constant accusation of lying (of _murderous _intent) is going to destroy me one day. "We were. Some of us probably still have the marks on our necks. They were quite tight on us. But we feared that some of them had cameras that would watch our every move. Soon after they set us loose to find you, we tore them off. And we're free of them now. As are you."

She looked at Neji with a new light in her eyes, something between disbelieving and curiosity, as though she cannot fathom our freedom being the same as hers. For the moment I can pretend she doesn't think of us as murderous but...unfathomable. Like larger creatures that tower protectively over her. Such is my fantasy for the moment, and it and her eyes lingering on me made me purr at her. The look in the little one's eyes changed again, to the look I'd become familiar with over the years; it was her look of contemplation, of flashing emotions in her eyes that meant the analyzing of a hundred materials. Unfathomable indeed.

"I can understand how you'd want to spend your freedom doing what you've always wanted to do…by causing the scientists to suffer…" She was saying these things slowly, and I got the idea that she was having a hard time understanding and completely accepting them herself. "But now it's sanity I'm questioning. Yours and mine. I can easily picture a field of tanks and military troops prepared to shoot us dead."

She was smiling—beautifully—at this prospect of having so little chance. "It doesn't matter. I was already told about your collars. It's just strange hearing about them on someone besides me." She paused long enough to frown now. "I recognize this area, it's not far from Portland, and the lab can't be that far from here. I'd like to know if, uh, I may approach the place first. I'm not asking to throw the first shot—"

Deidara appeared at her side, and his wing was trembling. He was barely able to keep himself from spreading it protectively over her back. Shielding her. "I'll guard you. If you think you're going up to that place alone and unprotected, you're _extremely _wrong, mm. Itachi!" He snapped his fingers, summoning the weasel to his side in a manner that was not flattering at all. "You, too. You can do the first shot. They almost made you go blind. You _still _might go blind."

There was a subtle feeling in the air, a change in the current, coming from my little one. Perhaps this news is surprising to her. Perhaps it affects her. "If that's true, then do it." she said. "Itachi, if they've really made you come close to being blind, then you deserve to strike first."

He acknowledged her with a wordless meeting of their eyes, more communication than most of us had ever truly had with her. That she is choosing to look him in the eyes nowadays, when she had never done it before, _must _be a sign of progress. Itachi's heart must be so light.

Time passed in a blur then. We eliminated the sniper: Kisame, Neji and Deidara closed in on him and sped in circles, creating impossibly fast targets. It was the concept of capture that made us wary, not the sniper himself. Though for Sakura, diving to keep from getting shot out of the sky was essential and overall good, once hidden in foliage, she was safe and she must have known it. The sniper was struck unconscious with a blow from Deidara's fist, and everyone took off at an ecstatic run. Once again we followed Sakura, who flew unusually low, low enough to be seen by a passing average human.

"It doesn't matter," she said in an oddly assuring tone. "If we're doing this, oh, God, if we're really doing this, people are going to find out about our existence anyway, through the destruction. The least I can do is fly around and let people know Chambers Inc. created me. The government is going to _destroy _them for creating us."

She spoke of "us" so casually, I thought that she truly considered herself a member of the pack now. But "thought" is so different from "knew." She began to drop out of the sky again, and we panicked. Her wings had thrashed madly. With pain.

Kakashi was closest to the spot where she would crash. He was raising his arms to catch her when the speed demon's silver wings unfolded again. She backflipped in the air and landed behind him, dancing crazily on her feet before settling. It made Naruto laugh. "So easily fooled!" She chuckled. The folds of Kakashi's black scarf rose up, for he was grinning.

Most of us knew of the building's special paint solution, which made it impossible to see from a distance. It was all but invisible, hidden in plain sight by another one of Chambers' manmade collections of things that aren't meant to be made. (But creating that which does not need to exist is their greatest skill.) Luckily for us, it was also stuck in the middle of a great national forest, so that even the large gap of space it required went unseen by probing eyes. The building would only be visible to those standing a close distance away. And we were.

We were standing together at the tree line, where the forest ended and the parking lot of the lab harshly impeded on it. Sakura glanced, with familiar aggressive wariness, at Deidara and Itachi. They both nodded to her and the three of them walked into the parking lot. They passed a few dozen cars: most of the employees were here now. The rest of us stood patiently at the tree line and waited—and listened.

They stopped once they were just over halfway across the tar. Sakura turned her head and whispered something to Itachi, and after this they all moved to the right a bit so they could be seen more easily from the many windows.

Itachi raised his head, and about it I could see his hair rising slightly, floating, as though gravity had faded around it. It was a phenomenon I knew. Sakura had never seen it, as far as I knew, but now she would. And oh, she would love it. She straightened now, perhaps getting ready to yell and call attention.

But there was no need for her to yell at all. A familiar face passed one of the open second-floor windows and his glasses caught the sun so that we could all see him. Itachi stayed still. The human in the window stilled, too. I heard the crash and tinkling of glass and spilled chemicals even from across the parking lot. And before their face dropped limply out of sight I could see a jagged spray of red, blood pouring out the human's ears. They dropped onto the windowsill, pulling on it for purchase and desperate not to fall. Dying possibly, surely suffering. Gasping and shivering and wondering which force of evil has appeared out of their dreams to take them. I _love _it.

The person gazed madly out the window at my three packmates with eyes that were perhaps newly blinded. He saw Deidara, Itachi and Sakura standing together, in the fashion of comrades, the fashion that no one would have ever expected in their right minds. The wire-rimmed glasses cracked. The white lab coat that only scientists could wear gained a spot of blood where it dripped down from the ears. The blueprint that only a worker could have dropped from the hand that hadn't held the tray of liquid vials. The person who was a scientist and a worker gagged.

Kabuto's face fell at last from the second-story window and I could hear him struggling to breathe.

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I feel that a lot of this second-half-of-a-two-for-one is filler. But the experiments had to _get _back to the Chambers lab, didn't they? I couldn't just skip a journey of 500 miles, could I? (And how did they complete such a journey in a time period of like a day and a half, while running? Dude, they're superhuman.)

Ino is going to play a slightly bigger part towards the end of the story. I have a humorous role planned for her, with a smidgen of bashing that you may or may not take as a joke. And I consider Ino-bashing always appropriate because her canon character has almost no redeeming qualities. In the anime, she had the balls to throw a shuriken at Kakuzu, and...and...what else has she done that's notable or admirable? Nothin'. **(Edit: This chapter was written sometime in 2009; now as I edit it in November of 2011, I still can find little to admire in Ino.) **

Please notice how Sakura is suddenly eager to get going and kill the Chambers folk. Before, she'd been planning to stay as far away from them as possible, and here she is, walking alongside two of her "worst enemies" to finish the "down with Chambers" thing that she didn't even want to start. Why do you suppose she's like that now? Well, I'd guess that the chance to kill her torturers, or at least make them suffer, is finally attracting her, powerfully enough that its influence in her mind is almost strong enough to challenge her almighty fear of the male experiments. What do I know, I'm just the author.

Also remember that for awhile, she lost her grasp of the male experiments' language. That's going to play a slightly bigger role, as well. And that's the end of my AN notes...I guess I'll just go find a picture of Sasori to ogle and leave you to read this chapter.

Ta…Storm.


	19. Nineteenth

**EDIT, December 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through to meet the bar of her current writing skills...and then update the story. YAY.

This chapter was written with inspiration from "Transformers." The 80s show, not the Michael Bay explosion films, although they're especially epic if you grew up with the original show. Or grew up watching your brother watch the original show, like me. Or if you have a poster of the 80s show in your room, like me. :3

Onto Airborne! Now that the really dramatic part of the story is starting (the part my brain has _planned _to be dramatic; we'll see what happens) prepare for some predictable corniness. I'll try to avoid it as much as possible but everyone makes mistakes and junk so…be prepared.

There's also a small segment about religion towards the bottom which I'm sure is inaccurate on more than one point. I'm not particularly religious myself, and all I really know of it (well, Christianity) I observed from my church-going cousins.

Chapter the Nineteenth.

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January 16th… maybe 8:00 in the morning…I slept in my office half the night looking over profiles of experiments in Lab C45 near Bangkok… ...Orochimaru POV

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...I am the director. I am the Director of the entire Chambers corporation, of course, but I'm also Director of Lab E699. No, you silly, there aren't six hundred and ninety-nine genetic experimentation laboratories around the world. That would cost a couple hundred fortunes to fund and hide from the public, and the labs' names are mere codenames. It'd be boring as shit to work in "Lab E1," I think!

As the Director of Lab E699, I have the authority to sleep in my office if I want to, which I did last night.

It's not as though anyone can do anything about it. They can wake me if there's an earthquake or some such unavoidable disaster, but otherwise I get to keep my peace and quiet. So I spent the night in my office while most employees went home. I'm guessing Karin stayed, possibly Kabuto, and maybe even Genma. That country bumpkin's a _rat, _I tell you! He's fooled everyone into thinking he's just that…a country bumpkin. Just like I told him to when I hired him in '05.

But don't be fooled yourself. He's not hiding any world-changing secrets besides the fact that he _is _smarter than a fifth grader. But if someone ever sees past that redneck façade, trying to dig deep into it, when there's nothing to dig for, well, that will keep them distracted. Genma is one of many distractions, time-wasters if you will, that keep my essential pieces from sight. I have many things to mask.

I originally gave Genma this plan to distract Karin, because she was always up in everyone's business and I simply wanted to give her something to do that would shut her up for a bit. So far, I don't think she believes he's anything more than white trash, so that plan's failed. (Damn.)

Back onto topic I must go…

Where was I? Ah, yes. I was on the train of thought that leads to Kabuto, and how he's simply delightful. A genius if there ever was one! So calm, so polite and witty and charmingly manipulative. Why, if only he was my son, then I could reach an even greater level of pride in him. And if he were a woman, I'd probably consider dating him. Her.

Kabuto, Kabuto! I'm so proud of that boy. Karin, age thirty, I might add, must feel constantly young, green and retarded in comparison to brilliant, modest, thirty-five-year-old Kabuto. And somehow he always manages to look ten years younger than his true age! I remember when I hired him, way back in summer of '93, just after Number 3 was born—er, Itachi…oh, it doesn't matter. I call the experiments by both number and name, depends how I'm feeling. He was just a runt of twenty-two, somehow straight out of Harvard after only two years of study. And come to think of it, he's hardly aged since I hired him then. Perhaps he spent those two years creating an aging potion while I sat in my chair looking more and more like the evil twin of Gandalf the Grey.

Even as the new man on the team, he went into his work like nobody's business. Dealing out medicine to the experiments, creating new medicine for them, realizing that Number 3's eyes had the capacity to create radiation and radiation poisoning just by _blinking _so that if the weasel looked someone in the eye, he could murder them…the list goes on. I especially thank him for creating a special mix of medicine for Number 8—you know, the shark thing—because said experiment has always been prone to disease, the poor beastie.

I wonder if Kisame would even be alive right now if Kabuto hadn't been working at this laboratory. Which reminds me, I should offer Kabuto a raise—when he's talking to Karin, so she'll hear it—of...of what amount? He's making fifty-two an hour now, a salary passed only by doctors, lawyers and very good or very bad poiliticians.

I'm always interested in that man. I wonder if he's trying to deceive me or if he really plans to take over my corporation when I hand it over willingly to him.

RIIIING. RIIIIIIING. RIIIIIIIIIIIIING.

Hee-hee. It's my annoying cell phone ring. I had Kabuto design it for me, making each ring longer than the last so it's really annoying if someone other than me hears it. Because no matter how old I am, no matter how old _you _are, it's fun to annoy people sometimes. With phones. I think my next ringtone will be an Angry Birds noise.

"Hello there." I said happily. Because thinking of Kabuto always made me a little happier.

"_Son dispuesto…_Ummm…Mr. Orochimaru…the rubber suits are ready, the ones you asked for on the twelfth of this month…"

I blinked in surprise and then realized with a quick laugh that he wouldn't be able to see that gesture over the phone. "I overheard that they would take two weeks to be made and sent up here to the Portland area. Did you find a forgotten supply in your warehouse, Yashamaru?"

There was a pause, and I could hear machines groaning in the background. They sounded rusty to me, if not on the verge of breaking down. Then Yashamaru's heavily accented voice sounded again, subdued and murmuring. "Kabuto and Ms. Karin phoned me a few hours after that and convinced me that I needed to get it done sooner than two weeks. I wore my workers and my machines down to nothing but your suits are ready, and the first dozen is flying to you now by chopper. The rest will be shipped by noon tomorrow…your time, not mine."

I couldn't decide which made more sense: Kabuto's polite, chiding voice telling Yashamaru that his home would be set on fire if he didn't have those suits ready immediately, or Karin threatening to castrate him with a power tool in a voice so loud that even the machinists in that Panama warehouse would hear her, and not through the phone.

Both, probably. That was what I told myself, and after a happy goodbye to Yashamaru I hung up and left my office to pace around the building with a smile on my face. Because I couldn't do much else until our squad of snipers contacted us with sightings of any of our experiments. Ten of them had been spread out around Portland, and two send up into Canadian wilderness. None of them have contacted me or my employees, which means they haven't been sighted yet.

Which meant that I had a lot of time to devote to figuring out how to present my case to the Supreme Court. What, you forgot? Pardon me for sounding Karin-like, but that's _really _quite dumb of you.

I'm going to tell the world that I've created genetically-enhanced war weapon-creatures, something that will be bigger than the impending election of Barack Obama, there's a chance that if I don't work fast enough with my secret congressmen, I'll be given the death penalty, and my corporation that supplies all kinds of things to the entire world will be terminated and there will be a large lack of "supply" to match the typical world "demand" and if that happens there may be an economic depression similar to the thirties in the grand old United States of Fuckin' Capitalist Pigs America-ville, a period that may last as long as twenty-five years and you FORGOT THAT? _WHAT?_

…Well, darn it! I must have forgotten my vitamins this morning! I love those little Flintstones vitamins because they're fruity and fun and they usually make me happy till lunchtime. And if I don't take one with my breakfast then some yelling happens and one of my poor employees walks around scared of me for the rest of the day. Apologies. I try to contain my—

"Directorrrr…! _Director!" _

Kabuto was on his knees the polished floor. Bleeding out his ears. His glasses were cracked and saliva was trailing over his lip. Hardly breathing.

Fuck my Flintstones vitamins. I rushed down the hall and bent to his level. I could feel my custom-hemmed trousers soaking up his blood, brushing in the morning's yet-unswept dust, but how could I care about such stupid shit when my best employee lay dying? What am I thinking this for? I grasped his shoulders and tried to help the man sit up, but even just my touching him made him squirm and shiver in what had to be pain. "What's wrong? What's wrong, tell me!" I tried to keep my voice firm and not furious or horrified. I can't get if I succeeded or not. His reply was to lift one hand, a hand that shook so horribly I feared it would fall off, and point it out the window.

Contrary to what my now-frightened brain guessed, there was no blood or mercenary sniper at the window. So he must mean something outside. I let my favorite employee down and stood up again, and looked out that window.

There, two stories below me, standing in the parking lot like all was casual, were my experiments. Numbers—fuck the numbers—Itachi, Sakura, and Deidara stood there. The males had their hands in the pockets of their black winter trousers and just that insignificant cocky action made me _furious _and then the fact that little, paranoid, braniac Sakura was there between them, not caring that her worst enemies were _right there_—

Ah. Of course. Sometime during the last few days, they'd formed a comradeship. They were not many solitary beasts but one terrible pack of wolves. I should have known.

Predictable. So many things are falling into place. For many years now, I'd entertained the idea that the male experiments seemed...just a little bit fond of Sakura. Perhaps they viewed her as their cub, or their sister, or perhaps they felt a mating instinct and wanted to fuck her up the wall. But it was based on very few observations anyway. I could be totally wrong.

About a dozen times, I'd caught one or another of them looking longingly at her, keening soft noises in her direction. Itachi once bowed his head to her, unmistakably, after she walked out of a room following a vivisection procedure. Yuugao thought he was bowing his head to vomit, and Kabuto, who surely saw the action on his security tapes, never said anything to me, but surely he saw.

Fate's had her fucked up way, per usual. It was true all along. Somehow Sakura got over her phobia of the males and agreed to come with them, which must mean they somehow _asked _her personally to come along. This makes me sort of wonder how she understood them, and wonder again what she thought and what was happening when Neji pinned her to the ground that day last week, and spoke to her. How did this all happen, when Sakura speaks perfect English and the males, as far as we know, can't? How did they convince her to come with them, when she spent her first words cursing them?

And now…now they're attempting…to kill all of us who have hurt them. Of course. Of course this happened, and of course they chose Kabuto as a first victim. He supervised them more than anyone. He watched them suffer more than anyone and created so much of the suffering himself. They must be the one they hate the most. Or at least, Itachi does. Only his powers could have damaged Kabuto from this distance.

I opened my mouth to challenge those backstabbing insects wi—

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January…what, 16th? Yeah. Morning-time. Who cares right now? Not me. ...Deidara POV

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"He's dead."

"Kabuto and Orochimaru were both there. Which one was it?"

"Orochimaru. I stopped his heart and severed his brain stem. Kabuto may still be writhing on the floor."

"Oh. Oh _fuck...yes!_"

"Indeed."

That's usually how a conversation between Itachi and me went, short and sweet like that, and this one was no different. I didn't have a problem with trading one-line sentences. It was the way I'd talked to him since we were little and I was just fine with it. But this time it was special, because _Orochimaru was dead._ The head of the most disgusting company on this planet had _died!_

Now we just had to get rid of his right-hand man and all the hard parts would be over. Not that taking out the top dog had been very difficult. But his right-hand man was a lot smarter. Kabuto was definitely smarter than Orochimaru, and even if Itachi had used his eye powers to rip at his brain and make him bleed out his ears, that didn't mean we won. We had to...to cut his head off, or drown him. He had to be undeniably gone.

But it's not like I would know how to do that. I can't fly, I'm not so smart and I kinda want to be impulsive right know, but I can't think of anything impulsive to do. So... "What now?"

"There is the option of breaking in right now and assaulting everyone we see." Sakura muttered. "It's fastest and easiest…and we don't know how long it will be until some other employee comes here and sees the majority of everyone is dead." I saw her finger twitch, a sign of anxiety and she glanced up at Itachi.

Predictably, understandably, he purred, "That is fine."

She couldn't stand to look him straight in the eyes for long, I guess. She looked over and me and said, "And it's all right with you?"

I couldn't talk. For what was probably the thousandth time I was trying to watch her eyes spark and figure out the emotions inside them. I'd never been as good at it as the others. But I loved to try. I just nodded and grinned. She turned around and gave a "come over here gesture" to the others hanging back on the edge of the woods. They crossed the parking lot—Neji sprinted, everyone else walked—to us and with Itachi's simple, "I killed Orochimaru," comment, Naruto exploded.

Weird. I thought _I _would be the one to explode. But maybe watching the guy stare out the window at us and then fall away was enough for me. But Naruto, just hearing it, couldn't control himself. The guy's fox-ears shuddered for a few seconds and he screamed something that might have been an animalistic "_Yeeeess!" _but might not have. He danced like a maniac, like he was rabid. Sakura shied away from him. I did, too. Fuckin' weird kid. Even though I totally get his emotions...weird.

Then he ran past all of us to the grey building. It looked like he was about to crash through the wall, but he jumped at the last minute, straight up—scaled the wall!—and punched his fist through a second-story window very near the one where Kabuto and Orochimaru had seen us. Laughing and howling, holding onto the wall with his claws dug into the stone, he punched a wider opening through the glass and jumped in. We could hear him running, boots slamming on the floor and claws for some reason scraping the wall.

He was going in to kill them. We hadn't even relayed the plan, but Naruto sensed it had to be done anyway.

"I will use the front door." Sakura said, walking away. She lifted her hands and crackled her knuckles. "It's more frightening when nightmares come to get you slowly." That was…pretty damn logical. And of course it was. Sasori and Neji followed her, and Itachi and Kakashi followed Naruto's example of running up a wall and jumping in the window.

That left me, Kisame and Zetsu standing there, unsure, and I felt a little…not-belonging, because Kisame and Zetsu were both typically uncertain about a lot of things and liked to take time to make decisions. I hated being forced to choose things. Simply _doing_ something was much easier. It felt as though entering through the window or the front door was a life-changing decision.

My feet went by themselves up the wall. (Yeah, I can climb a wall but not fly. What are _you _pointing that out for? You can't do either one, hypocrite, mm!) I entered the same window Naruto and Itachi and Kakashi had and my feet landed on a familiarly smooth, white floor. I was hella glad that this time I was wearing thick boots so I couldn't feel that disgusting, perfect texture on my skin.

Some meters or feet or whatever away from me was the window through which Orochimaru and Kabuto had looked out and seen us. I saw Orochimaru's body, and next to him there was a trio of blood splotches on the ground, and dozens more tiny ones leading around the corner.

And right then I didn't care. I saw Chouza, the glutton, the sinner, and walked towards him with my palms open and the tongues sweeping. He knew what was coming "This is for my entire life." I told him. He just ran away, and probably could not understand me.

When I caught him, I bit his eyes out.

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January 16th…nearly 8:58 AM…can't think…must concentrate on breathing! ...Kabuto POV

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Oh _god, _was I lucky.

I'd seen the experiments standing out there in the parking lot and my first thought was to find one of the filing compartments. Hiding and not dying. I was about to run, to drop my rack of acetaminophen vials and run, when I felt Itachi's eyes within me. The only way I can describe the experience is with the word _nightmare. _

Every nightmare villain I'd ever seen in my dreams as a child, every ghost, every dragon, every burglar, I saw them all through a camera's-eye view tearing away at my brain and skull. I saw them tearing away pinkish-red pieces of it like an animal would tear flesh from its prey. I felt the ripping of my innards as the rapists from every nightly news story shoved themselves inside me. I felt something cracking in the back of my neck.

Itachi had nearly severed my spinal cord. He'd nearly caused me to go blind by cutting straight into…what I guessed was my visual cortex. But even we are not completely sure how Itachi's powers work or where they are sure to attack. Perhaps he taps into something otherworldly that we cannot touch. Although we in a scientific laboratory don't like to think that.

But somehow I'd been spared. Pure luck kept me alive, kept me from being in his sight long enough to kill me. And here I was hiding in a filing compartment while, just like I guessed, the experiments ran rampant in the lab. I could hear the screams as my fellow employees met their own creations in the halls and saw them running with death in their eyes. I could hear sounds distinctive to each experiment. The cracking lash of the tongues Number 5 used as whips, the earth-shattering shake of Number 7's power-laden punches, the crackling burst of Number 9's electricity that she created from nothing.

By now, every staff member of the building was _within _the building. There was no one, not a single employee, out searching the nearest cities as there had been a few days ago. They'd all come in just a few hours ago…all but Karin. Of course.

Karin was at her home in Portland. Still conversing via some webchat with whatever friends she had at other Chambers hidden laboratories. She is the luckiest bitch on this earth. She's home chatting online and I'm hiding in a cabinet from monsters.

This space, this little box of nothing, has saved me from certain death. Orochimaru showed it to me the day he hired me. All that needs to be done is flash a certain card before a seemingly random space on this wall, and what appears to be a reinforced steel filing cabinet pushes outward from the wall, and pulls back in seamlessly. It is large enough for a person to hide in. That is what it was built for. It is a place to stay hidden while your workplace is destroyed around you and enemies hunt you, which Orochimaru reasonably feared.

Without the card that is sitting in my pocket right now, no one will be able to open the compartment and find me. I am surrounded on all sides by six inches of concrete and steel. I am safer than anyone or anything in this building. I must merely wait until the experiments leave. I must...recover. It's a good thing to be doing, as Itachi's attack has left me hurt and feeling strange, like I'm not a person anymore but something black and fermented inside, and bleeding. To recover from this, to sit breathing and shivering from this, is infinitely better than listening to my coworkers be slaughtered outside. I heard Genma not long ago, crying. I heard the ripping of his skin and Zetsu's soft, double-laughter.

This is what I saved myself from. My life is ensured, and my coworkers, my shallow friends, are left to die. I wish you all swift deaths. Many of you are stupid and shallow and few of you actually deserve true pain.

Number 2 appeared in my mind, the scorpion, at a toddler's age. The age he had been, or appeared to be, when I was hired. He was a ridiculously adorable child. He melted quickly, blended with the sticks and branches in my mind into a church setting. The pews formed from the sticks and branches, and I heard a sermon. My father was speaking. Or someone who looked like him.

How confused he made me as a child. Preaching his Catholic views while my all-Christian mother could never get over how easily he lived his life. I got many earfuls of how forgiveness and being absolved of sins did or didn't work, and many other red and blue, fire-and-ice views, that I'm sure I believed completely conflicting things at the same time. It confused me, and I got really tired of hearing. I just wanted to play with my chemistry sets and magnifying glasses, which were much more interesting. Not to say that religion was not. That it was so contradictory, and so many kinds existed, was fascinating to me. It was all like a ruined, tangled system which needed untangling and a metric ton of...something productive.

My parents attempted, but never succeeded, to teach me something of value amongst their conflicted beliefs and teachings. All I understood (and a lot of that understanding was from books and later the still-new internet) that religion was a source of fighting, and if you were heavily religious, someone probably hated you or even wanted to kill you. And wasn't that just nice.

The experiments often made me think of little bits of religious stories. Sasori reminds me of the war-torn deserts in the Middle east. Naruto brings to mind the western David and Goliath tale, Kisame predictably reminds me of that fellow who got swallowed by a whale (Jonah...Josiah? Hmn.) Why did they remind me of those things, these ideas and books and values that I never really learned...the _only _subject I never really learned?

Soon enough, I got it into my head that I was raising a group of living war machines, capable of speeding through a crowd and slaughtering every last human being around. I got it into my head that with such machines, such powerful, breathing machines, I could do something about it. These creatures were (I thought, at the time) stupid and mindless and would listen to any command we could teach them.

Blueprints of raids and ambushes formed in my head while I went about my daily business. I found that I did indeed have the options and connections needed to send the experiments to the Middle East and have the chief political and religion figures cut down. I kept thinking, if this fight over some god and his messages and meanings had been pushing waves and waves of suffering on the innocent people, and I had the power to do something, why not?

I kept thinking, if I had a group of living war machines who could cut down all religions but the peaceful few, why couldn't I, if I would save so many people?

Naturally, my brain told me just how stupid I was, for knowing so little about religion and thinking I could change and destroy the conflicting ones I didn't even know the _names _of.

This is the only area in which I'm quite the dumbass, and could probably offend someone in under a minute without trying. Thank God I never talk about this.

Unfortunately the sight of the nine experiments always made me question that. Kisame could crush a torpedo with his _teeth _and Kakashi's claws were strong enough to tear up tank armor in one strike, and I could unleash them on a target with the command, "kill." Why not do the same with, say, a slave driver in a third world country? Or another bin Laden? I once even had this ludicrous fantasy idea of Sakura and Deidara descending on a despairing crowd in white, angelic robes, into the center of a group of people who would then convert their faith in a heartbeat. Once Sakura got a few years older, I had some more, long-lasting thoughts about her in a white robe, and then with no white robe, but those are mine to keep and never disclose.

And some thoughts about Sakura in a white robe kept my company and became a perfect, solid anchor in my mind. I clung to it, to her, as the waves of Itachi's madness receded, unwillingly pulling their claws out from my skin and fading away.

Should the experiments leave this building soon, my destination shall be some town many miles from here, where I can type on a computer without fear of an animal mutant pouncing on me and ripping my throat out. Now that Orochimaru was dead, I could wrest complete control of the most powerful corporation on Earth.

If I asked that every hidden laboratory send me their own genetic experiments, they would have no choice. If I asked that those experiments be sent to me so that I may train them to recapture my nine that had escaped, those laboratories would have no choice.

Glass cracked and shattered outside my little cabinet. Beyond the wall I heard slow, light footsteps. This could possibly be Sakura, but then again, any of the experiments could make their footsteps sound little and light if they needed to. They must be able to scent me now. Yes, they do. Their footsteps have stopped because they smell me nearby. Oh, lord. Oh, lord. Push him away. Please do push him down the hall and towards another victim. It cannot be me. Those claws _cannot_ be pushed into my throat. The experiment moved and ran past my cabinet and I could breathe again. Far away was another high-pitched scream and the roar of a beast. A wall being smashed, a desk overturned and slammed against a wall. More screaming, crashing, the building shaking on its very foundations. Somewhere, there must be a fire.

Again I heard footsteps. This time it was two sets at the least. They stopped at the end of the hall, perhaps ten yards from the patch of wall space behind which I hid. I listened to them and slowed my breathing immensely. And I heard, "I've gone up and down the place twice." Sakura! It was Sakura talking!

The one who replied was a deep-voiced male…but he didn't speak English. I heard nothing but two long purrs. One of the male experiments, speaking their animal tongue. But which?

"I didn't, either. It's not like they need nine stories to perform all these disgusting trials on us. Complete waste of space and resources."

Was she _talking _to the male experiment? How...how incredible. We'd all seen this through the camera in Zetsu's shock collar before it was broken, but to see it in...pardon me, to hear it in person was beyond words. This is beyond whatever we created. How could she understand them when I'd been trying for years to understand them and still couldn't? What had she done during the time she'd been away from this place?

"No. I haven't seen Kabuto or Karin."

The male made a very angry sound in the back of his throat, and I swear I could feel the vibrations of that sound even behind my many inches of concrete. The male's tone isn't just angry, he's furious. He sounds prepared to annihilate something. How is Sakura reacting to this? Does she look scared? Is she unimpressed? Speak and let me understand, Sakura. Let me in.

"My guess is that they're both hiding somewhere special, a room made just for crazy invasions like this. Perhaps special rooms near their homes. Maybe the basement of this building or some hidden room in one of the walls."

'…_That...is the smartest female ever to be born.' _I thought fearfully. The male experiment sighed and made more animal noises. They sounded curious or questioning, maybe even thoughtful. Sakura's voice and clarity had calmed him.

Sakura's reply was, "I told you I would help you kill Kabuto and Karin and Orochimaru if I could. I didn't help with Orochimaru and those two are still assumedly alive. I still have work to do with you—"

Her male companion interrupted. It was a long string of words. It sounded quiet and unsure. I guessed he was asking a question that Sakura didn't want to hear, or one that had an answer he wouldn't like. There was tension between them because of these words. Sakura was silent for a bit once the male finished.

After a moment she replied, "Yes. Until those two dead. The best option now would be to find their personal offices; I really don't think they're still in the building. I think if we look in their files we can find a home address. Karin's office—"

My lovely winged creation stopped talking and made a surprised noise, an adorable one. She made a "Hnnm!" sound. I heard a small rustle of clothing, like two people—well, like two people _hugging, _the sliding of sleeves as they moved about someone's body. The male whispered something, and then I heard a very tiny, sort of wet "pap" sound, one that could have been in my head, the remains of Itachi's attack, or my imagination, or nothing at all. And five or sick seconds later...

"Please…don't lick me."

I'll be damned. I wished I could see which experiment Sakura was talking to. Whoever he is, he's just...made a _move _on her. Mother of God.

The male replied with the growling, purring voice I was getting used to now. The tone was playful and smooth. Sensual? I couldn't tell. My God, what I wouldn't give to know if this experiment is being _sensual _to Sakura.

The bird experiment's anxious reply to that was, "No, you do not have to _fix _it! What needs fixing is you! A few hundred volts might do the job..." She left that threat hanging, even though it hadn't been spoken in a very threatening voice. Her companion didn't take heed of the warning anyway, it seemed. I heard another rustle of clothes, another purr. Sakura stayed quiet through whatever this exchange was, for not quite ten seconds, and gave another weak signal of dislike. "It would be very nice if you'd move away now. "

I can't help but grin at this scene, this is amusing, this is incredible, this could be an animal trying to love its mate, or a brother embracing a sister. This blows my mind. Poor Sakura, who was educated in almost everything but ways of affection, had a handsome man doing goodness knows what to her in a lonely hallway. Threatening to electrocute him was probably all she could do.

For a few moments they had a humorous scene in which Sakura tried to get the man to desist whatever it was he was doing. Sakura stuttered, "No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no," at about sixty miles per hour, the male purred continuously and I could picture Sakura trying to break free from him—and then, I could also picture her going still as a statue out of fear. Stuck in a compartment behind a wall, my judgment about this encounter is kind of terrible.

Then the dominant fellow in this little relationship let out a small yelp. I'd heard no crackle or zip of electricity, so I didn't know what Sakura had done to make him stop. "See, if you do this I won't have to pinch your furry little ear."

His ear! What a fantastic clue! I chuckled inwardly. _'Only two out of the eight males have furred ears: Neji and Naruto.' _

His reply was—was partially—in English. How I understood it is beyond me. The piece I heard was the words "worth it."

Sakura was silent for a brief second. "Why do you try this hard, for someone who dislikes you so much? That is not 'worth it', Neji."

'_Neji! Neji's the one who's…who's doing this!' _

There is another rustling-of-clothes sound, a smaller one than before, so they must have moved only just slightly. "That what your logic tells you, isn't it?" Neji murmured. "Logic won't help you for this." Some three or four seconds passed after he said that, and I could so easily picture that fellow giving the girl a little butterfly kiss during that silence, that I felt almost sure it had happened. What would Sakura do upon being kissed? What does she think about kissing? What are her thoughts about romance? Romance from the male experiments, or just from Neji? Sakura, are you desired or are you loved?

"It's only reasonable to not trust someone you've been afraid of for a very long time. Of course I can understand that. I just thought of something that I hope will help." I heard a little bump against the wall several feet away from me, and a little sigh from Neji as, I'm guessing, he stretched out.

"My hands are stuck deep in my pockets and I'm sitting down. You're above me, you have the strength to kill me and probably the will. And no one's here but us and I am defenseless, and can prove it to you. So go ahead."

"You're asking me to kill you." The goshawk-girl's didn't skip a beat in her reply, yet she still sounded, if only a bit, disbelieving. And it may have been my currently-muddled mind that heard such a tone.

"Yes."

"No."

"No?" Neji didn't even try to hide his surprise at her strangely _simple _reply to such a request.

"Of course not, Neji, that's ridiculous. Asking me to kill you while you sit there helpless just so I will then _trust _you. What's the point of me trusting your dead body? Is that what you want? I wouldn't do that. So please stand up. I heard Neji moving, and undoubtedly he and I shared the same curious sense of respect and wonder. Of course Neji couldn't resist asking in response to her first remark, "…Not even to me?"

And Sakura, put on the spot, answered mostly clearly, "Yes. Not even to you. Now, should we go? Everyone—uh, every human in this building is probably dead. And we can't sit here waiting for some police squad to see the smoke and come rushing in."

Apparently Neji saw sense in this, and when I heard Sakura's distinctively light footsteps moving away down the hall, I heard Neji follow her. And there was silence again. Once I was mostly sure no one was around and listening to me, and after enough minutes had passed that all the experiments could and should have left the building, I sighed. It was all I could do then.

Because…what I'd heard from my hidden box in the wall here was one of the most astonishing discoveries of our half-human experiments ever made. I couldn't just ignore this.

Neji is most definitely attracted to Sakura, and there's no reason to believe that the other males don't have something like this lurking in them as well. I saw Deidara and Itachi standing by her just before Itachi tried to destroy my brain. And they both stood beside her, keeping her between them in a way that was obvious protective. Whatever the males' feelings about Sakura are, they definitely want to protect her from harm.

But is it innocent or lustful? Affection or desire? Or perhaps both? How can I know, and does Sakura herself know?

What's more, how can any of their feelings on her come to fruition if their languages stop their magical, perfect meshing? Am I to assume that Sakura has learned Male Experimentese over the past week and is a master of it now and forever? How have _I _become a master of Male Experimentese? It could be that something as simple as time spent around them, hearing the language being spoken. It's the same way very young children pick up languages. But Sakura's far too old to gain understanding in such a way. But...it makes sense.

The reason she understands them now is that we employees, we humans, are no longer there speaking proper English in front of her. She has the other experiments around her now, and as she spends time with them she can't help but pick up their language unconsciously. She is after all, of their same part-animal "species." Such is my theory, as half-assed as it sounds.

So perhaps the more she is around them, the more she is with those not-English-speaking-non-humans, the more she understands their language. And now that I think about it, it would make sense if she was thinking analytically and thoroughly, like a Chambers scientist, and she suddenly lost her ability to understand them. I think that could very well happen.

But that doesn't tell me how _I _understood Neji's language. I can only guess that after years of listening to that boy scream and howl and purr, I'm finally understanding his words and the timing is so perfect that it allowed me to tune in on the most important encounter Sakura's ever had with a male. Perhaps if I see another of our eight male experiments, I'll understand his words, too.

If he doesn't chop me up and eat me first. Which makes me realize…as the new Director of Chambers Incorporated…I needed to recapture my genetic experiments before they caused even more damage. And I needed to tell the public about the danger they now faced. (I'd had a hunch that Orochimaru had been quite close to going public about this himself with Sakura's escape and all.)

My movements were stiff, but I managed to get my card and flash it above the circular scanner near my head in the back of the compartment. It moved out from the wall like a drawer and I climbed out and stepped, wobbly, onto the floor.

I needed to get my laptop, my container of all classified information, and get my car, and drive. For a good few hours. I had several hidden laboratories to connect with. Many people to talk to.

666

January 16th, and probably somewhere around 9:00 in the morning, maybe? ...Sakura POV

666

Okay, before I tell you about my current (morbid) situation, let me fill you in on what happened half an hour ago (horrifying) so you know why I am, once again, scared stiff.

I had just stopped Anko Mitarashi's heart with a good thousand volts—and found a picture of her cat in her office and made a mental note to go to her apartment and make sure it didn't starve —and I was reeling with joy. Anko Mitarash _dead _was like climax (I think?) and I had to stand there above her ruined body and just...feel the freedom. The sweetness of that witch's death. And once I was done, I turned just two corners and came across Neji the caracal. He was still licking blood droplets off his teeth from the last Chambers rat he'd killed. We walked together for one hallway or two and then talked some. I told him I thought every person here was dead, but I hadn't seen Kabuto or Karin, which led to him asking…a question I didn't like. (Of course. What _do _I like in this world that's actually accessible to me?)

He wanted to know how long I'd be staying with his accursed group. And I was no cheater, and that positive personality trait bit me in the ass just like I thought it would. I told him I'd stay till Kabuto and Karin were dead, just like I promised up at Buffalo Jump. And he gave a very, very happy smile, without warning put his arms around me in some pretty-looking Hallmark embrace and he _licked _me.

Okay so that can be forgiven because Neji is fifty percent feline and because I have some admirable stores of patience and felines lick things more than your average beast so his savage mind probably can't help it _right?_ But then he tried to do it again, and I had to pinch the stupid guy's cat ear to make him stop. I was feeling like electrocuting him but I felt it would be way too excessive, no matter how soft the voltage, so pinching had to suffice.

Then he kissed me on the forehead—almost as…as strange as the lick—and offered me a chance to kill him. He was sitting on the floor, hands in his pockets so he couldn't defend himself without digging them out, completely vulnerable. And I _said no. _

And I can't figure out why.

Which is really bothering me, because I can figure out most anything, and when I can't figure something out, I'm content to learn the proper information to figure it later. But I really don't wanna "learn the proper information" to learn why Neji _came onto me _like that, and then offered me a chance to shoot him dead just so...what, just so I could see that he was really so devoted to me he wouldn't put up a fight? What the fuck's the logic in that? He's lost his mind! This genocide of heartless scientists we're all participating in has made him jump off the frigging deep end and explode with some kind of horrible ecstasy and I do _not _want to be around him and his pretty pink tongue oh my fucking God shut up.

Okay okay so after that we found the others. Me and the three oldest experiments (who apparently don't like the little tykes making any important decisions, ever) thought we needed to find someplace to stay besides a random, cute little copse in the woods. The mercenary we'd seen before coming to the lab brought on the possibility of more mercenaries. And to have one of the members of our wacky pack posted as a guard all night while the rest of us slept and ate would be really dumb since this place would be crawling with authorities in less than a day. We do not want to be here when people discover this building, a building covered with invisibility paint, filled with dead people in labcoat, rooms of torture equipment and strange files and networks that give concrete evidence of genetic experiments and monsters straight out of the Sci-fi channel. It would be painfully un-awesome so we need to find someplace to rest while Chambers finally has its black innards exposed.

So stupid me had to speak up with this idea, an idea that I told them probably wouldn't work, that I knew of somewhere where we might possibly for just a little while be able to rest and be hidden. Hidan and Kakuzu's house. Yeah.

I'd told all the others that the place should be empty, as I'd told the cousins, and Shikamaru, to stay away till I came back. So if they followed my suggestion they should all be at Shikamaru's place right now. If not, I would have to introduce everybody. And it wouldn't go well, because I have said, you know, _nothing _positive about the males to Kakuzu and Hidan, and swore up and down that I would protect them from those awful beasts.

The plan was that everyone would follow me there, because Itachi and Sasori were dead-set against splitting up and at the moment I had no desire to express an opposite opinion to them because I was tired and angry and confused and just wanted the decisions to be all done and gone bye-bye. I had a sketchy idea on to get there based on my flight away from the house to the forests outside Portland, when I'd been luring Kakashi, Zetsu, Neji and Deidara away some…four days ago.

Four days ago! It seems like last century. It certainly was in the previous lifetime. .

That's how it is. We ran across highways, sped over intersections and moved in shadows. Thank God it's nighttime or we would have been seen in seconds. Now we're walking merrily along a bike path behind a series of houses that I hoped was near the cousins' place. I was well ahead of everybody else—they were all staring at me! Come on, God, I've been nice! Help me out here! Draw their attention with some smiting lightning bolts or something!—except for Kakashi, who apparently got to walk closer to me since he was oldest.

Unmistakable. I saw it. Amongst hundreds of other houses, I saw the cousins', against all odds. And I'd pulled through against ridiculously…ridiculous odds once more. Somehow. I pointed to the left. Beyond the fence, the brick and white plaster of the home would remain in my memory forever. "That's the one. Jump that fence there, with the ferns growing at the bottom." I sprinted a few steps and took flight, gliding over the fence easily. I landed badly, though, and I was glad the first male to jump over was Kisame, who looked too preoccupied with the weirdness of a common American backyard to notice me about to fall over. (Unless he looked out of the corner of his eye. Hmph. Sneak.)

The window through which Kakashi had thrown a little pebble to frighten the cousins was still broken. The ruler that Kakuzu had used to measure my wingspan and height (eleven feet and 5'5) was on the kitchen table that stood straight in my view. From the backyard, the only way into the house was through the basement, so I dashed over to the front yard, sped in through the door that was un-tactfully unlocked and opened the basement door for them to enter.

The basement scared the living hell out of Zetsu. He kept growling and spitting at any cobwebs or funky-looking shadows. Sasori, Zetsu and Kisame kept stopping to sniff at random boxes and junk, but for the most part I led them like a troop of baby geese through the basement and up the stairs into the living room. Ahead of us was that same room where Hidan, Kakuzu and I watched Insidious, and played Grand Theft Auto and had staring contests where the prizes were all Reese's cups.

"They're not here…" I said frightfully. I heard who I think was Itachi say, "Hmm?" quite suspiciously, and I replied, "Uh, uh…I need to check something. Don't move, don't touch or eat or bend or mutilate anything until I come back. Kisame!" Kisame withdrew his hand from touching Hidan's prized, mint-condition and really old Transformer figure.

"Don't touch Starscream." I almost told him that Hidan wouldn't like it. But I don't want these creatures to be connected to my beloved friends, or their possessions, anymore than the circumstances are forcing them to be. I would keep from even mentioning their names if I could. "_I _wouldn't like it if you broke that." Fortunately, Kisame, and Itachi as well, seemed fine with just looking at it. They all seemed seemed fine with just walking around and making admiring little purrs at the things they'd never seen before. Predictably, though, I felt someone's eyes on me as I left the room.

I knew that most people got around these days by car. Hidan and Kakuzu each had their own car, Kakuzu's being newer and cleaner than Hidan's old hand-me-down thing given to him by his father. I moved swiftly to the garage, ignoring the little pain in my wing when I slipped and smashed myself against a wall—why am I loosing coordination skills today?—but I made it to the door.

Hidan's 1970's something Ford was still in the garage. What Kakuzu had proudly called a Mercedes Benz was gone.

'_They should be at Shikamaru's. They could use Shikamaru's car if they needed one. Why is Kakuzu's gone?' _

666

Yes, Orochimaru is dead, and yes, Kabuto's explanation about Sakura on-and-off ability to understand the male experiments' talk is _absolutely correct_. And also yes, Kabuto thinks he can "fix" religious problems round the world by wiping out most faiths. What a...geez, what's the word for people like him? And I'm sure he offended _someone _but...on the other hand, Kabuto is a snide, evil and yes, probably offensive person naturally. He's not supposed to be liked. And man, what a relief it is to finally get this chapter done...

Besides that, **THERE ARE CHARACTER PROFILES IN THE NEXT CHAPTER **so go read them, please.

**(Edit, December 2011: at the time I wrote this chapter, sometime in mid-2009, I was still waaay nervous about writing romance and the NejiSaku scene made me hide my face in my hands. I could not decide if the males' affection for Sakura was platonic or romantic or some animal/freak mixture of both that encompasses just pretty much every loving emotion there is. I think I was leaning towards the latter, so I wouldn't really have to choose, and could lean on the platonic part of the relationship whenever I wanted ^^;) **

Ta...Storm


	20. Twentieth CP

**EDIT, December 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful high school graduate with friends and an actual life, and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through to meet the bar of her current writing skills...and then update the story. YAY

So a lot of space for this chapter is taken up with some very pertinent information that you all should read; this information is called CHARACTER PROFILES, which take up a pretty big six pages in my Word document. For once I have no comments to put up here, because I'm thinking I should save space. See the bottom of the chapter for my typical informative author's notes and pointless remarks.

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…_Experiments of Lab E699…_

Number 9, "Sakura": Sakura is a comparatively even-tempered and innocent person for one with a background of sanity-sapping cruelty in the name of science. She is the youngest and most intelligent of all Lab E699's experiments, whose knowledge is more vast than the average adult can boast, with significant and unfortunate gaps, that is. In her thoughts, Sakura is often sarcastic and analytical, humorous and calculating at once, in an unconscious effort to retain her sanity, and is quite used to mentally talking or even debating with herself to solve problems. Many years in the lab have bred huge stories of patience and determination in her, and she will do nearly anything to protect herself and, more recently, those she cares about. She loves all types of food, and the idea and act of flying. Personal freedom is her most important value.

Unique abilities: flight, creation of electric energy from nothing, unknowingly has male experiments wrapped around her finger

Age: Nearly nine years old, appears roughly sixteen

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Number 8, "Naruto": Seemingly nothing but a body of endless, hyperactive energy on the outside, Naruto...isn't _that _much different on the inside. The most notable difference is an admirable persistence to do most anything, from imperative tasks such as gaining Sakura's trust and annihilating Chambers Inc. to drawing a straight line and tying his own shoes. He is possibly the most uncontrollable of the group of nine with a humorously short attention span and a tendency to act first and curse angrily about mistakes later. His humorous bursts of energy can sometimes become uncontrollable and terribly powerful if his emotions run too high. As the little brother of the pack, Naruto isn't usually given much respect and counters this by behaving mischievously and annoying his elders to no end with pranks, tricks and snarky comments he pulls out of thin air. From these activities he gets great enjoyment and has no problem showing it.

Unique abilities: creates orange-colored energy that coats body, to either give extra power or provide a "shield"

Age: Ten years old, appears to be roughly sixteen

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Number 7, "Kisame": As a half-shark, one would expect Kisame to be a quiet sort ready to crunch and attack the first thing that moved. This could not be farther from the truth. Despite having the physical strength to halt a moving train and being tall to the point of intimidating his creators, Kisame is observant and humble and easy to please. He has no problems with doing any menial or tedious request presented to him and rarely complains about anything. His general submissiveness to others and obedience is usually attributed to Itachi, the first experiment to befriend him, whom Kisame respects hugely to this day. He is a follower and by no means a leader, but is always careful about who or what he follows; Kisame's kindness and moral standings are of a higher standard than that of most humans.

Unique abilities: breathing underwater, unchallenged physical prowess

Age: Nearly eleven years old, appears between twenty-five and thirty, partially due to height

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Number 6, "Neji": Unlike the above experiment, Neji is quite like the animal that rules half his blood. He's mild-mannered, composed and enjoys preening. Hey attacks only if provoked, and often does so with his claws. His vision, thanks to biochemical tinkering by certain unnamed mad scientists, is near perfect with the addition of a sort of X-ray vision his creators have named "Byakugan". To match this he has a natural affinity for noticing details, large and small. He appears to make a hobby out of playing with Naruto. Only for Naruto (or Sakura) would Neji stoop to playing like an incessant and immature child. What he prefers not to let the older experiments know is that sometimes he likes it.

Unique abilities: can jump up to four stories high, has "X-ray" vision that can be used to spot vital points and organs on a human or animal body

Age: Eleven and a half years old. Appears about eighteen.

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Number 5, "Deidara": Despite being one of the elder experiments, Deidara acts like a child and is proud of it. His greatest source of fun was always causing trouble for his fellows by means of annoyance: pulling tails or hair, slapping on the head, etc. (although if anyone pulled his hair in the middle of a fight, in a white room, shit got real.) Despite his general immature front, Deidara has a deep understanding of freedom and almost kinship feeling towards birds, which he has seen only in pictures up until recently. He also shares a tight connection with the elder experiment Sasori, and hates to see him, or any of his friends, in pain. And so long as he has justification for it (i.e., an excuse the scientists will believe) he is not afraid to shed tears for them.

Unique abilities: tongues in palms of hands can lash out as whips, can bring dirt or clay into palm-mouths and spit out explosive mixture

Age: Twelve years old. Appears eighteen or so.

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Number 4, "Zetsu": The most obviously "non-human" of all the lab's experiments and the most physiologically complex. Each half of his body controls its own half of his organs, going so far as to beat their half of the heart at different times. His black-colored half is stronger, and more aggressive and obscene than his white half, but they don't quarrel very much, and he is still referred to as a single person. All Zetsu and his complex body-halves want is separation from the horrible life at Chambers, and time to relax and do nothing like he'd heard "regular humans" do. He knew he wasn't strong enough to get such a thing by himself, though, and all he could do was encourage his friends to persist in living when he could hardly persist himself. For Zetsu, ambitious and clever Sakura is a fine role model, besides being his little one to care for and love.

Unique abilities: can melt body into a material very like soil and wood, or even concrete and steel on occasion, and through this, move around through ground-bound objects such as trees and walls

Age: Getting close to thirteen years old. Appears about twenty.

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Number 3, "Itachi": Arguably, Itachi hates Chambers Incorporated more than any experiment the company ever spawned, most due to the fact that they nearly caused him to go blind while conducting surgery to his optic nerves when he was a little child. Itachi was notable sensitive as a youngster and the experience of his many painful eye surgeries grew a lifelong hatred inside him. He doesn't show this hate, and in fact hardly shows anything. Rarely will anything but a frown or polite disinterest grace Itachi's fine face. He saves his expressions for the other experiments, who understand that Itachi truly has a soul underneath his freezing exterior. All, but for the youngest experiment, understand that while a scientist may see a cold frown, in truth there is a spark of sympathy, wishing his fellows a less painful trial than they had yesterday, or pondering anything that will take his thoughts away from the laboratory.

Unique abilities: firebreathing, severing spinal cords and forcing internal bleeding of the internal cortex by looking at someone (still under study)

Age: Fourteen years old. Appears twenty-two.

.

Number 2, "Sasori": One may not think grace and elegance come with having a the blood of a venomous scorpion. One has not met Sasori, who can make the clumsiest slip over a banana peel appear as finely choreographed as a dance routine without so much as blinking. His mind is not always this unwaveringly poised: secretly, Sasori worries constantly about the fate of himself, his friends and his Sakura, and would be quick to bare his fangs if he hadn't spent his childhood learning to have such fantastic control over himself. Another notable item he has control over is his pack. Along with Kakashi and Itachi, he makes the most important decisions. With Kakashi's sensibility and Itachi's tactics, Sasori's mental surplus of wise ideas and plans are highly valued.

Unique abilities: can move objects by pointing at them with telekinetic "puppetry" (still under study)

Age: Nearly fifteen years old, appears nineteen or so.

.

Number 1, "Kakashi": The leader of the pack…in a way. Kakashi was introduced to all experiments but Sakura when they were infants and told them to beware of the bad humans who controlled their lives. It was actually he who began the brotherhood that tied all the male experiments together throughout their lives, and his idea has proven to be a lifesaving miracle for all eight of them. Since then, Kakashi has concerned himself with the matters of "his pack" and is usually the one the others turn to when they need advice, and he is usually perfectly glad to give it out. Due to either age or natural skill, he is a fine strategist and fighter and has a knack for predicting an enemy or target's next move. He isn't afraid to use this skill, both in the quest of annihilating Chambers Incorporated or punishing annoying and mischievous pack members.

Unique abilities: steel-like claws capable of smashing and cutting through metal, left eye capable of deadly hypnosis similar to Itachi's.

Age: Fifteen years old, appears roughly twenty-six.

.

…_Humans…_

Hidan Zashi: The younger of the two cousins by a year or so, Hidan complains and bitches like a stereotypical high school student right out of a TV show. He curses endlessly but has enough sense to limit the mouthing when around _very _important figures, like his college professors and his parents, but few others, unfortunately. Hidan is more into video games and movies than his cousin is and would proudly boast his collections of films, action figures, and World of Warcraft manuals at any given chance. This is not good for Hidan's ego, which only deflates when situations become life-threatening. During these times Hidan shows a rather stupid bravery.

Unique abilities: can pass the first level of Mario 64 with his eyes closed, capable of stabbing himself without pain (due to certain issues with an online religion that Google directed him to), can cuss in Arabic.

Age: Twenty

.

Kakuzu Zashi: Slightly older and usually (not always) more mature than his cousin, Hidan, Kakuzu can also be a champion sailor when it comes to foul-mouthing, but can do so with more flair than Hidan can. A car crash in his high school years left him a bloody, gory mess which doctors literally had to stitch back together. Kakuzu found the stitches aesthetically appealing ("cool") and chose to keep them, easily threatening or at least growling at anyone who gave him shit for looking different. While studying to be an accountant in his eternal quest to be rich, he's come to hate crunching numbers despite being remarkably good at it, and becomes irritated and angered easily. He's been using "special medication" on and off for several years to keep himself from exploding and reduce stress. Despite that, Kakuzu very much enjoys days of relaxation and spends his free time reading (classic novels preferable to newer ones) but enjoys the occasional four-hour session on a good old Xbox 360.

Unique abilities: is a human calculator, creepily good at guessing small-time lottery numbers (wins 20-50 dollar prizes frequently), can juggle

Age: Close to twenty-three

.

Orochimaru: Orochimaru is the founder and Director of Chambers Incorporated and rules his company (and in turn, a good part of the world) with a happy little iron fist. Soaring past competition in all markets and squeezing through legal loopholes has been a breeze for one of Orochimaru's intellect and general coolness. His most stressful issues, in fact, are menial things like a slow internet connection and the bitchiness of his personal secretary and highest-ranked scientist, Karin. Even the smallest irritating items and concepts, such as a pen running out of ink or a needle that needs threading can set Orochimaru off on a brief but regrettable tantrum in which he throws various objects and screams like a raging toddler. Those who knew him in his younger days are very put off and confused by this behavior; Orochimaru was a calm person in all situations up until he founded Chambers a few decades back. Thank goodness he's dead now, and we'll never see his disturbing and bipolar face again.

Unique abilities: can solve any Rubik's cube in under three minutes, speaks four languages,

Age: Only Kabuto knows his true age…the popular number rumored nowadays is fifty-nine.

.

Kabuto Yakushi: If there was anyone the ruler of the world needed to trust earth to while he was on vacation, that ruler would surely pick Kabuto, the world's best right-hand man. He's efficient at nearly everything he tries, polite, witty and just cocky enough, at the right times, to infuriate his inferiors and enemies. There's not much they can do about it, though, because Kabuto's established a fine position for himself in life and anyone who wants him dead or suffering can't do much but doodle their daydreams on scraps of paper in their dreary office cubicle. He's played an extremely large part in creating most of Lab E699's experiments (all but Kakashi, Sasori and Itachi) and was the one to choose which animal should balance their human half. And who knows, his choices may have made all the difference today.

Unique abilities: knows computers and IP networks inside and out, is a master at shadow-puppetry and card tricks, juggling, managing money, and lying.

Age: Thirty-five

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Karin: The know-it-all, glasses-wearing, teacher's pet, hateful-of-everyone-around-her class president that everyone has met sometime in their life. Karin has gotten a position of power and wishes to rise further, knowing her intellect can get her there. She's not afraid to step on any bugs on her road to the queen-like position she's always dreamed of, but would rather die than lower herself to the level of any bug or person she deems to have the worth of a bug. Karin is prejudiced, sophisticated and self-centered, and is openly spiteful of anyone who is not so, even those who can't possibly ever be in such a way, like the experiments. Even her parents are baffled as to how Karin came upon her now natural self-assured and rude persona, and cannot guess where it came from.

Unique abilities: is a fast shopper, can walk while balancing three dictionaries on her head, speaks Croatian, Czech and Japanese, once threatened her weatherman to not say that it would be rainy on her birthday so can technically control the weather(?).

Age: Thirty

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Temari Subaku: Temari is the eldest of a group of three children and is forced to be the most mature to ensure her sibling's survival of their father. She'll starve herself and be subjected to beatings by her father to keep her younger brothers out of harm, and believes she should die doing it. Temari is tough, cynical and unfriendly to most who approach her, even mild strangers asking her for the time, but inwardly wonders, endlessly, where their next meal will come from and if she will have to pickpocket someone to get it. She is ashamed of what she does to live but cannot help it, and for this Temari cried at night—before her father died in a car crash.

Unique abilities: knows how to use a gun, can hotwire and drive most cars, knows how to brew a sedative from coffee, ranch dressing and cranberry juice

Age: Sixteen

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Kankurou Subaku: Kankurou is the middle child of the Subaku family and true to the meaning, he often feels caught in the middle. His younger brother is too frail and unstable to completely care for himself and his sister constantly goes to unfair and inhuman lengths to buy them a few TV dinners for the week. All Kankurou can do is comfort his little brother to the best of his ability and hide his pains when he returns to their room from their father's beatings. He tried to amuse his brother with puppets he carved from wood blocks he found, and when they didn't amuse Gaara, Kankurou amused himself, and became adept over the years at maneuvering puppets of most any size. This is one of the few things in life that brings him personal comfort, one of the few things that Kankurou can say he _does _care about.

Unique abilities: masterful puppetry skill, good with cameras, knows all about Shakespeare

Age: Fourteen

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Gaara Subaku: At a tender age, Gaara's heart and mind were shattered at once by the drunken fury of his father, and every day he has to deal with the fact that his siblings cannot pick up all the pieces for him. Gaara is always silent and almost always sleepless. He smiles only at family photos featuring his brother and sister and the little toys his siblings share together, like oriental fans, wooden puppets and fifty-cent tic-tac-toe games from gas stations. Gaara is unsure of how to be happier with more than these pathetic things, and though he would like to learn, he finds it very hard to convey. This is coupled with the unfortunate fact that Gaara is fearful of change, and to change anything in his life he will have to speak. Hopefully, to his siblings only.

Unique abilities: capable withstanding beatings in utter silence, can solve thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles with ease, and can hide in strange and small places

Age: Thirteen

.

666

The morning of this particular January 16th is not going well. But how many things go well for me on any day, at any time? ...Sakura POV

666

So, days ago, when I was hanging out with Hidan and Kakuzu in their house and just enjoying myself, they wanted to watch a movie with me. It was based on a twenty-year-old cartoon about alien robots who turn into cars. I thought that was amazing. The cousins were really glad I did. Unfortunately, the movie was depressing for the first half, because the leader of the good robots, Optimus Prime, _died _just after I was beginning to admire his honor and self-sacrifice. But before I can depress myself too much with that, I can feel myself wanting to move on to thought of the baddies of that series.

Before we started the movie Hidan told me about the main villain in the story's universe, a cunning jackass called Megatron, and his loud, cynical second-in-command Starscream. Starscream's been trying to overthrow Megatron since like forever and he makes no secret of it, but Megatron seems to just ignore him. Every time Megatron comes up with a killer plan to destroy the honorable, good Autobots, Starscream is all, "That plan sucks, Megatron! Insert large number of flaws here! Listen to _my _plan!" And then it turns out Megatron's plan is always ten times better—

Kkkk-REEEEEEEEEE

"You broke it."

"Shut up and help me fix it!"

"Sakuraaaaa! Kakashi made the television go staatiiiic!"

It was _so _nice to sit on Hidan's bed and think about his favorite cartoons, and ignore the group of helpless men downstairs breaking shit that wasn't mine. I was having fun thinking about Starscream and they have to break the TV in the living room and…guhhh, I better go see if I can do something.

The figure that Kisame had been tempted to touch a half hour ago had been moved to Hidan's room, on his dresser and out of range of projectiles and invaders. That's where it had been before Hidan showed it to me a few days ago. I'd been lucky enough to find some disposable plastic gloves under the sink so as to not get my fingerprints all over it. I'm glad to say I got the figure back onto his dresser safe and sound.

Then again, the Bahamut model that should have been on his desk wasn't there. I had seen it before four of the experiments came to fetch me from here, but that was four days ago and I was really hoping that Hidan had moved it himself, otherwise…I couldn't guess where it had gone. How hard could it be to lose a big, black dragon with frickin' huge red wings? And even if I wasn't responsible for it going missing, I wanted as much to be normal and safe as could be for when the cousins returned. (I was trying to ignore the fact that one of their cars was gone. I'd thought up three dozen reasons for it already but for now I don't have the time or wish to list them all out for you.)

For now I had to take care of my stupid boys. (Noooo no no no no no, they are not _my _boys. No. Ew. No. _The _boys.) The ones who are older than me and _should _have some smartness to show for it but are acting like retarded three-year-olds, probably putting tinfoil in the microwave and and eating the stuff under the sink...except that last one is okay, they'll get sick out of their minds and won't pester me.

Well, I was now at the bottom of the stairs. Just in front of me was the front door, to the left was the kitchen, and to the right, the living room. And the television in the living room was showing static, just as Kisame had reported to me in his best whiny kindergartener voice.

Kisame and Sasori leaned against the couch—I noticed Sasori was humorously holding his tail in his hand like the handle of a briefcase—and watching Kakashi press buttons on two remotes like he had no idea what he was doing, which I'm sure he didn't. Maybe the one that says "play," dumbass, oh wait, can he read? Hm.

Making a wide arc around Sasori and Kisame, I made my way over to the TV and looked at the flashing lights on the television set, DVD player, and DVR. It looked to me that Kakashi had changed the channel to Video 2 with the television remote (which Hidan says is for the game consoles, not the DVD player). Kakashi was trying to change the staticky channel back to the right one but pressing totally random combinations on both remotes at once. Stupiiiid.

He handed me the black remote, the one for the TV with a helpless whimper that sounded so freaking _weird _it was difficult not to giggle or cringe at it. I don't know which I would have opted for anyway, so I flipped the channel upwards, and somehow went one-two-skip-a-few and put us somehow on Channel 5, which was the news.

And of course, what are they talking about on the news right now at 10:04 AM?

A woman was sitting in her fancy news desk and talking about a video screen behind her, describing it as we viewers saw it: "—a _building _which inexplicably appeared in Tillamook National Forest not two hours ago. Investigators claim the building was coated in an unknown paint solution which, when seemed to make it invisible to any onlooker who saw it from afar, though it's perfectly visible from the parking lot at the foot of the building. Park rangers as well as local hikers are being interrogated as we speak and are completely baffled. The building has no contract license, no record of construction in any filed sources, and, would be incredible if not for the morbid sight within."

"Shit," Naruto muttered a little curiously from the couch. I didn't hear him that well over the woman's closing comment of ,"Let's take a closer look." The video screen grew and overtook her and the screen completely. And we all saw our birthplace in its new, deserved state.

Now instead of the rather untouched west wall of the building, and the various authorities shuffling around in the parking lot, there was a newer, shakier feed, probably from a simpler handheld camera, of the north wall, where the front door, and the greatest damage was. We could actually hear this time, and we heard the officers shouting, and many footsteps pattering and slamming. You could see the window Neji had broken and climbed through, the fires poking fierce orange branches out into the air from other broken windows, and score marks from the claws of various experiments who had climbed in and out of windows. A giant hose sprayed forceful water into one of the flaming windows.

"Ha! You missed that window, Neji!" Naruto pointed at one of the many broken windows, and I remembered at some point looking outside from the lab and seeing the two of them throwing rocks to break windows, not always hitting them. The woman's voice returned.

"The building's inexplicable appearance is baffling in and of itself, but an even more confusing sight lies inside the place, and it is a morbid one. Viewer discretion is advised." The feed changed again, probably still from the handheld camera, and it showed all our work on the scientists. I saw Anko lying half-in and half-out of the first-floor elevator. The camera holder approached her warily and gasped when he moved around the elevator threshold to see the upper half of her body. Her jaw was dislocated and hanging huge and swollen. Her torso had been punched through half a dozen times and was speckled with violet liquid. Sasori had been the one to kill her. The camera holder looked upon this sight for a grand one and a half seconds before he screeched and pulled back and his camera fell onto the floor. "What! What's wrong!" His friends called, and they saw, too.

Good job, Sasori. You've done good for the first time in your life. I should...extend some respect towards you now, but I'm not sure if Anko's murder is quite enough. Your act has been good so far and this could perfect it. For now I'll just pretend that it puts him in a more positive light.

This same shaky camera went up a floor and found a massive splatter of blood on the wall, and Choza lying below it, against the wall, his skull torn open and his hair torn out.

It looked further and saw the torn-away door of one of the white rooms and looked inside and found Yuugao's body, Genma's, Sasame's Jesus _Christ _somebody had torn their intestines out and tied them up with them, oh my God, oh. Oh. Calm down. You always knew what they were capable of, that this could have been you, Sakura. Keep watching, the lady's coming back.

"Exactly what befell this building, which appears to be a laboratory, is unknown, but it's a grisly and terrible sight, not unlike a war-torn battlefield. The authorities are suspecting terrorists, perhaps seeking some experimental chemical being tested in this lab, but nothing is sure as of yet. Stephen, do you have any word-"

Stephen-what's-his-name said there'd be more after these short messages, and then Tony the tiger was leading a squad of kids across a soccer field. I walked away into the kitchen. I heard who I think was Sasori turn and make some kind of questioning purr in my direction but I ignored him. I had to make sure nobody was doing something threatening in the kitchen. Because, next to the garage that was the home to rusty power tools and pointy metal shelves, the kitchen was the most dangerous room in the house. And there was no point in thinking about this news story, as we had gone in fully aware that our wrath would make the laboratory public, would make Chambers and all of its ugly secrets public. Congratulations, Wal-mart, you monopolize everything again, because Chambers is gonna go down freaking _hard. _This will make history like nothing before. Because we finally got revenge. Feels nice. I entered the kitchen knowing I wouldn't find anything nice there.

Something fuzzy and warm brushed my leg. To my credit, I didn't flinch. I just looked fiercely at Naruto, who'd moved his tail just so it would touch me, and his fox-ears twitched in what I really hoped was embarrassment. He held out a can of Sprite to me.

"This is to drink, right?" he asked me. "I've seen Kabuto drink from these kinds of cans a hundred times. But I never got how he opened them—" My next next movement was thus: Naruto still held the can and my eyes were on him. I moved my hand up and used two fingers: one to help steady the top of the can and the other to pull that little oval opener thing, and I opened it.

The movement was so quick and I didn't even look to see what I was doing—that was _cool. _I haven't done anything cool since I had my first fistbump with Hidan!

So I felt really damn proud of myself as I glanced Deidara—pressing random buttons on the empty microwave—and then I turned and went back upstairs, staring solemnly at my feet as I went up there.

I'm thinking that if they see my expression and realize I need some relaxation, some alone time, they will respect that and not act like drunks exploring the house. It would fit in with their facade, respecting my wishes and all that. And what a lovey facade it is. But let's not get into that. And let's also not get into the possibility that one of them might stalk me up here to keep me company or guard Sakura the cute little cub or some shit.

I closed the door as I arrived in Kakuzu's room, which was a lot more organized than Hidan's, but still had its fair share of stuff strewn on the floor. This "stuff" was mostly college textbooks and scientific calculators of different sizes, and a 360 controller. I dodged all of this and went straight to his computer. It was a big, flat monitor with several wires tied neatly into packs with other wires. It was nice and refreshing to look at. I sat down at the rolly chair...rolled a little bit...and some more...and used the lever to go up and down (Hidan says I should say "Me gusta!" for something like this) and plucked a certain item out of my shorts.

'_That'd be some seriously good luck if this thing had anything worth reading…' _I thought, and I plugged the chip into the USB port. _Very _good luck. Like, the opposite of breaking a mirror.

The chip slash memory card slash thumb drive whatever is straight from Karin's office. I took it from a locked part of her filing cabinet which I unlocked via punching the lock several times until it tore off. One sore fist later, I had found this, tucked inside a notebook where such a thing didn't belong. It looked suspicious. Useful. Perhaps holding some useful information that we could use to protect ourselves, or be forewarned about any plans to attack or recapture us. And if not, at least it's my "alone time" excuse.

You know what I just thought of that would really suck? What if it needs some special program to show up on the screen? Can something technical that _Karin _owned really just be put in any random computer and load up properly? It would only make sense if there was some special program needed, if not three or four passcodes or an included virus that would eat up Kakuzu's computer.

Then again, my knowledge with computers is sketchy at best, and Kakuzu's is like whoa, and in the couple days I spent with him and his cousin he tried to show me the ropes to the whole thing (router, hard drive, Firefox, Google, Skype, etc.) but none of it helps here. I was still waiting for something to show up on the desktop, staring at nothing but a Call of Duty wallpaper and the Firefox logo. Nothing was happening. No download screen, no rejection, no visual destruction from a virus. Nothing! Crap! Did I steal this thing for no reason?

A noise. A breath. A presence. Bigger than me.

I whirled in the chair and stood up and my hand reached up and grasped…Kakashi's navy scarf.

With my hand and his scarf covering his mouth, he chuckled. I didn't want to hear whatever convincing lie he was about to tell me, so I spoke first. "The door behind you is for knocking." I muttered, lowering my hand and casually turning away. But of course, inside, I was _so tense _I wouldn't have been surprised if I pulled a muscle just sitting in the chair being still. My wings, somehow, were not trembling, maybe because I'd never sat in a chair quite like this and I was sitting on my own pinions. And when I turned my back to the wolverine man to look at the computer screen—fear was eating at me now. At every last bit of me. What is he doing up here alone, sneaking like this?

Kakashi obviously made noise on purpose. I could easily hear him sauntering closer. I could more than easily feel his hand when it clapped down on my shoulder and sort of felt his breath when he leaned down near my face to look at the computer with me. Somehow his breath smelled like trees, and that's...curious. Did he tree bark to survive recently? And how is it that I can smell it, anyhow? I have a bird's traditional sense of smell, which is nonexistent. Stupid bark smell.

"What's that?" he asked, meaning the little spinning wheel on the screen that had just appeared."Are you playing a game?"

"No. I don't what it is, but it's uploading," I replied.

And when he asked, "What's uploading?" I just didn't want to answer. What if he recognizes the chip or whatever is stored on it? What if he's simply angry at me for coming up here like a moody loner, or what if he's happy that he now has a chance to attack me without the others hindering him? I don't _know _him or what he wants, not really, and that's frightening. I don't want to talk to him no matter how warm his hands are or what the scent of his stupid breath is.

"Something I took from Karin's office cabinet." Oh, look at me go. "All her other drawers had nothing but lists of the people who worked at the other labs, and a blank weekly planner. This chip was the only interesting thing in there. I thought the information on it might make it worth taking." Way to go, Sakura. way to be. What the hell were you just thinking ten seconds ago, _clearly _you secretly wanted to spill your guts and expose your soul to Wolverine. Oh, excuse me, Conscience, I never knew I cared for him so! Wherefore art thou, Wolverine! Let me spill other random secrets to you while you rip out my intestines! (I think my train of thought just took five wrong turns.)

The spinning wheel was replaced by a grey bar, slowly filling up with green. A number above the bar started at zero, and kept rising as the green increased. It was at 17 percent already. To complete my puzzle of Dumb, I furthered our conversation with, "Why'd you come up here?"

"I wanna watch you."

'_Wanna stalk your prey, you mean.'_ I thought, and couldn't think anymore, and only said, "Why?"

The scarf moved up just a little with his lips in another grin. "Why not? So we can talk, I suppose. I don't know you that well, Sakura, and I should, and I should always be around you to protect and love you. But this is nothing but a rehash, isn't it?" He paused, almost long enough for me to reply, but not quite. "I came up here because I felt like it, and because you're adorable and fun to watch."

Adorable? That struck a note, or...or something inside me. Whatever it struck, it's crooked and out of place and I've never seen it before. When has anyone _ever _called me adorable? What have I done that's adorable? How do I look adorable besides being a never-ending beacon of bubblegun-pink? Does he really think that of me?

Well...let's check? "I am not. Except around the two who own this house, I'm a persistently uncooperative bitch and I electrocute people I don't like. Also, I talk to myself."

He laughed. Ohh. "What a terrible way to describe yourself. How about 'ambitious', or 'enjoys flying?' Or 'frequently ignores her elders' advice'?" He must be talking about himself. And me, in relation to him. Like we have a _relationship. _Suddenly I'm less scared and more...annoyed.

My eyes traveled to Kakashi and landed sharply, cruelly on him. He sensed something unfriendly was coming, that his too-close position of having his hand on my shoulder and leaning playfully over me is now especially unwelcome.

I curled my lip slightly. The frown came naturally. "I'm getting sick of this treatment. This 'rehash.' Your never-ending insistence that we're buddies isn't getting me used to you, it's just getting old. It sounds more and more like a broken record or the lie I'm quite sure it is. Do yourself a favor and get a new game plan, or get out."

The last phrase cut him, I saw his heavy flinch and his eyebrows pressing together in distress, like something was too, too wrong and...good God, his face is half-covered and it looks like pure despair. What happened to him? What is he thinking right now?

Whatever he was thinking, his actions stayed the same. His hand tightened on my shoulder (I was ready to run, jump, squirm, fly, punch and electrocute) and it shook, too. His eyes, two seemingly completely different objects, were wet. He was a small distance from crying, for goodness' sake. Perhaps he did; I couldn't see suddenly, as his face disappeared, pressing into the hollow of my neck like there was a pillow there, he was burying his face in my neck for God's sake, oh my God what do I do what do I do!

"They've crippled you. Oh, god, Sakura, the scientists did this to you." Is he crying? Or starting to? Or... "They made you so distrusting. Of everyone, all around you. It'll take forever for us to heal you and for you to see the truth. What do I have to do?"

Was he trying to talk to me, or to himself? Either way, his tears aren't going to sway me. They may look convincing as heck, and he may be exposing himself and all his vulnerable spots to me completely right now but...but he's right. I am far too distrusting, too perfectly distrusting, to credit anything he says. I hear a little noise from him, like a muffled or muted whine from a dog.

"My little one," he said, again leaning on their pet name for me. "Tell me what I can do to change your mind. Starve myself? Take a bullet for you? I _will_." Such a passionate voice. He must be a grand pack leader indeed.

I fell back on honesty, which I had done when I had first introduced myself to Hidan and Kakuzu, and it had helped me then. Perhaps it would again. "That might possibly convince me." He pressed up against me happily when he heard those words, like some excited cat or dog. "B-but that's ridiculous, to gain trust by doing _that. _It would be better if you'd just leave me alone, no matter what it is you want to accomplish."

"No."

"Yes."

"I won't, and none of the others will."

"The lot of you are-"

Buh-BEEEEP. Buh-BEEEEP.

Oh, look. 100 percent. Just in the nick of time; I wasn't exactly sure where I was going with the "You all are" branch. So I just told him we'd talk about this later (seriously?)

Kakashi moved slightly away from me to view the computer screen, and I put my hand on the mouse to maneuver the cursor. A new window popped up, taking up the entire screen. First a white box showed up and some faded text was beside it, and then it finished loading and became clearer and clearer. A photo appeared in the white box.

_Uploading to page last viewed – "Compiled Statistics, Characteristics and Records of Experiment Number 5 of Lab E699" _

The photo was of Deidara, handcuffed and wearing a depressing white coat against a grey background and looking stonily into the camera. He'd obviously been forced to have the pictured taken, but despite that he looked healthy and strong and impressive and his blue-feathered wings appeared even more muscled and powerful than normal. To the right of the photo was a long page of words with statistics like his height and weight at the very top.

My eyes locked on a little bit in the third paragraph. _"Human DNA taken from Chloé Yamanaka, husband of Inoichi Yamanaka, both resident owners of eastern-Miami flower shop "Flower __Power". Children of couple includes single daughter Ino Yamanaka, currently studying at University of Miami for chosen career "hairstylist" and—" _It went on.

"Is this—" Kakashi began.

I tried to finish for him. "Deidara's...origins. Maybe all of ours." The places our human DNA had come from. The people who had...begun us.

Do I really have one of those?

I started to choke thinking about that, that I might have a mother or father, an idea I had considered many times before but never cared about because it didn't matter and didn't help me, and it was hugely unlikely my "parents" knew their DNA had been stolen to help create me. But this. This tells who Deidara's human roots are. If I see mine, will I really look and be able to know? Deidara's mother is French. He has an elder sister. What's my family like?

My family. That sounds insane.

"The sidebar," he whispered, pointing to the left side of the screen. "There's all of our numbers." Of course the guy wanted to know if he or any of his buddies had an unknowing sibling. It also struck me that Kakashi can _read, _but that simply information to be put on file. Okay, he can read. Anyway, he's just as curious as I am. Seeing as I'm such a disgustingly kind soul, I clicked on the "Number 1" icon at the top of the sidebar. In a second, his screen would load. Kakashi would read about his family.

A page began uploading. A photograph appeared, of an almost straight-on Kakashi, complete with the scarf covering his mouth and nose, and the grey outfit he was usually made to wear in the laboratory. He looked the way I remembered him before my escape, except his claws were down and not crushing through concrete and trying to catch and crush through me. But this time that's beside the point. This time, Kakashi and I were still together and read the information just below his picture. The gist of it was that fifteen years ago, a Chambers scientist, in the guise of a nurse, pretended to administer a shot to a woman in labor. Somehow no one noticed that the "nurse" injected nothing, but pulled out blood and even tissue from her unborn child. So much was taken that the child weakened and died minutes after birth. This tube of blood and human life were injected into the egg of a wolverine, fertilized through magic or something, and became Kakashi a few months later.

"My human DNA is from an infant?" He murmured. I could see where his thoughts were going. Did that make the woman his mother or grandmother? Was the infant a parent or a sibling? I saved him a brainfreeze and tried to explain. Per his insistence that the male experiments take everything I say as truth, he ought to believe me. "Your human part is from your deceased brother. Chambers killed him. And that woman was your mother." Not that I knew if any of this was truth. But giving answers felt proper.

His hand squeezed my shoulder again. He must have been reading the following paragraph, about his father. The unnamed man committed suicide after his newborn son died. I wonder what's going through Kakashi's mind right now, what kind of truths or horrible lies. Would he truly be distraught knowing what his father had gone? Would he care? Would he pretend to care to keep up his facade? Does he think he indirectly killed his father?

...What the hell was wrong with me? I must have turned into a druggie overnight, because I don't remember giving a shit about how Kakashi feels yesterday or anytime before. But here I am, and out came _this _gem: "You can't possibly blame yourself for Chambers did. I might understand if you had been _born _at the time this happened, but you weren't, and you could do nothing. Chambers hurt your family, but you can't be blamed for their ugly deeds."

Kakashi stared at me for a long minute, during which I looked down at the keyboard and pondered the meaning of life, Avogadro's number, the equation of a line and Morgan Freeman just so I wouldn't have to look at or think about the man standing next to me. I tried not to think about him when he pulled down his scarf in front of me (I didn't look) and he turned my rollie chair to face him (still didn't look!) and he leaned us close till our foreheads touched together and his palm pressed the back of my head. We were very close, and he was very still. It made me curious.

So it seemed that he was trying to draw emotional support from me, but it wasn't like I was a great giver of such things. I let him stay there because he was quiet and motionless in this position. But then...I got vibes. Uncomfortable vibes, the same vibes I'd gotten back in the Chambers building a few hours ago when Neji had kissed my forehead. Was some part of me sensing another kiss coming? Where was the part of me that had been downplaying Neji's kiss in my mind and was keeping me from freaking out about it? Would I black out this kiss, too? Why the fuck were they suddenly wanting to kiss me?

I could just feel Kakashi grinning, because I was looking away so as not to see his face which would probably send me into shock, and anyway, he started purring along with grinning. "My father's committed suicide and my brother died so I could live, and I still have room in my heart to find you so kind and adorable. You're quite a miracle." He started pressing his face against mine, moving around slightly. Nuzzling. Oh, geez. Someone save me someone _save me. _

"I…I don't try." I stammered, just so he wouldn't be doing this to me in utter silence. This just made him purr even louder and I think he just found it even cuter, and this was just borderline ridiculous.

Something really awesome happened then: Kakashi got distracted! See, the computer made this _Beep Ba-Ba-Beeeeep _sound and then another window opened up out of nowhere. It wasn't a part of the data contained on the chip, merely a routine spyware check that the computer was instructed to do once in a while. Kakashi looked at the new window, releasing my head from the prison of being stuck to his. He still kept a hand on my shoulder, though.

And while he read this new spyware screen something occurred to me. Again. These "encounters" with the male experiments were growing repetitive. Kakashi didn't know the half of it...or perhaps he did. Perhaps they all shared information, remember that idea? The one where they're all working together to cut up Sakura instead of every man for himself? Perhaps he already knows about how Naruto insisted I was trustworthy, how Zetsu observed me like a god when I was told to go to Buffalo Jump, about Sasori trying to keep me warm in the northern woods and a few more occasions I don't feel like naming. He could know all of these things, and how I reacted to all of them. Scoot away, avoid the speaker, stand guard, put a wall up. They all meant the same thing.

And yet they continued to approach me and admit affection to me, give reason after reason why they careda bout me and why I was so worth protecting and loving. How they all met me as a tortured little girl in the laboratory and they took pity on me and "played games" with me and through the years we apparently became best buddies, and also a creature they would collectively refer to as "our little one". They just can't let go of this story for one second.

...You know what. You know _what? _I'm gonna go insane for a few seconds. Like, really insane. Take-me-to-the-funny-farm insane. I will pretend the males are telling the truth. God forbid I don't get a ticket to hell for telling such an epic lie.

But it we just pretend this story is true...what would I think about it? Very, very hypothetically?

Three or four seconds had passed since Kakashi stopped nuzzling me. Why yes, I do think pretty damn fast. Which is why I'm looking forward to finding a real book and sitting down and seeing how fast I can read. I'll probably be like, _zoom! _Because I didn't read at all during my stay with the cousins for some reason. Dunno why. Kakuzu has a six-foot bookshelf in his room and I've always wanted to know why _Watership Down _was so critically acclaimed and the world of Harry Potter has always sounded like a dream, a fantastic dream—aw, fudge, I got sidetracked.

Back to business. Yes, what if the story's true? What would I think or feel or do? Well, I think I know. I would scoff and tell them that they ought to expand their horizons. They could do better than the violent, unlucky, socially retarded, nervous-wreck-at-all-times, talks-to-herself Sakura. The girl who doesn't even want them.

They could find a new "little one". A new girl, from an abusive family, or from no family, whom they can love and cherish and take care of like a puppy. But not me. I would be flattered and confused but I don't think I would want them. I would want to be left alone still.

Strange that I would spend so much thought, so much serious and confident thought, on this pointless question. It must be the weird feeling I get from when they get too close to me. Neji kissed me on the forehead a few hours ago or maybe even less and I still can't name the emotion that was going through me when he did that. I couldn't remember feeling it before, and Kakashi's nuzzling got nearly the same reaction in me. That strange _warm_ness.

Why? Why did _that _foreign, dangerous emotion have to be one of those things in life I can't figure out? Why does it have to be one of those things that I _want _to figure out? That isn't fair! I get so few rewards in life. I hope Heaven ends up being more satisfying than this.

Eight seconds had passed since Kakashi stopped nuzzling me and I'd launched into one of my typical Sakura VS. Sakura debates. I was a speed-thinker.

"You can leave me to read these if you like." Kakashi said. Looking up, I saw he'd minimized the window about spyware and was looking only at the screen Karen's little external hard drive chip had given us. He clicked the "Number 2" link on the sidebar and a picture of a pissed-looking Sasori showed up, followed by page after page of text featuring him. "I know you want to make sure the others don't destroy this house. For the…the men that live here…what were their names again?"

You remember their names, asshole, you just don't want to say them. Are you sure you're fifteen, man, 'cause you sound like you're six. I told him the cousins' names.

"Hidan and Kakuzu." He repeated their names like they were some black substance oozing out of a corpse. "I know you'd want to make sure Hidan and Kakuzu's house is in one piece when they come back. We'll be spending the night here to be fully rested, and sometime after that we'll think of a next move to make. In between those times, you'll have a lot of stupid boys to divert from household dangers. I'll finish up reading this and help you."

He lifted his hand from my shoulder between the words "boys" and "to" so that I could stand up and leave Kakuzu's room. He sat in the chair as soon as I left it, pulled up his scarf to cover his mouth and kept his eyes on the screen. I stood staring at him for another few seconds, wondering. I was about to turn and leave the room when he added something else. "And Sakura, don't mistake me. I'm going to keep reaching for your trust in me. I mean, you're probably thinking right now that I could find something interesting or new on this thing and keep it a secret by damaging the chip and saying, 'oh, sorry, I broke it when I pulled it out.'"

Well, fuck. Forget the "Kakashi is forgetful" crap I was thinking before. He's twice as devious and clever as I ever thought! Because that exact situation had gone through my head just moments before he said it. And if it came from the head of Sakura the Pink-haired, then it's a convoluted idea indeed. What if he really does that? I need to keep an eye out for him. He's clearly dangerous. And not just dangerous as a hungry beast is dangerous.

He turned in the chair and lifted one foot onto his other knee. He took off the big, black boot and thick socks that the scientists had given him to stalk to cold forests in the search for me. This revealed a bare, clawed foot. "This ankle's been sort of sore lately." He twitched it, and I could see something in it was bulging where there should have been nothing but a smooth, concave slope of skin. He'd either pulled a muscle or had some muscular infection or both. "If I attack you, you go straight to my right foot and rip through it. Or electrocute it, your preference. Something to cause it pain. I'd fall right over, and you know it."

I knew it.

"And your own profile…" he added, raising one hand a little, "I swear to God and Allah and every other heavenly being that I shall not read it if you don't want me to."

Of course, if he read it, he'd probably find out any weak spot I had in or on me. That had crossed my mind the moment I'd seen Deidara's page finish loading. And here was my rebuttal: I glanced beyond him at the computer screen, where the "Number 1" icon had gone from white to grey. I looked at him again with unwavering and sort of fake confidence.

"The icons change color when you click on them." I told him. He blinked and looked around at the screen having apparently not realized that. "My number will still be white if you don't click it. And if you take out the chip and re-insert it to reset the colors, you'll have your fingerprints on it…or the prints of whatever glove or covering item you use to put it back in."

God only knows why he was smiling at me as I thoroughly explained this. Maybe it was one of those "I-smirk-because-I-respect-my-clever-enemy" expressions. TV shows have a lot of those, Kakuzu told me so. Not that I was sure of Kakashi's respect for me, but you get it.

With this said, Kakashi waved a hand, his scarf lifting as he must have been smiling. "I'll be down in fifteen minutes. It can't take longer than that to read all our profiles. Till then, could you please get Zetsu out of the kitchen? I saw him sniffing some baking soda before you came downstairs to help with the remotes. And I'm almost sure that's not for eating." Thinking of Zetsu choking on baking soda, I laughed, and Kakashi did, too, and I felt so strange for being able to laugh so casually in the presence of this despicably polite creature, this creature who had once outsmarted me so thoroughly I was pinned helplessly to the ground, and right now might find yet another way to read my profile without my knowing. Good god, what an opponent I have here.

"I'll try and feed them, too. Most everything in the kitchen that the cousins showed me is microwavable, so I can't do anything worse than burn it."

"I think I saw Zetsu looking quite curiously at the stove, too." Kakashi added. "I don't know how it works, but I know it can burn, so..." I took his obvious invitation to make myself comfortable (i.e., leave) and did so. I took my time going down the stairs, thinking what a new development this was, and gathering all the pieces of the development into one: "Kakashi the unpredictable rollercoaster." What'll he do next? What if the moment really comes when he could take a bullet for me? How convinced will I be? How deep in the spider's web?

I'll deal with that bridge when I come to it, I guess. I can't do anything about it now. It's not like anyone ever predicts seeing the bridge before it's in sight. No binoculars allowed.

(Put _that _on a fortune cookie.)

666

January 16th, 4:33 PM ..

666

I left it. I left it. Oh fucking _God, _I'd _left it! _

"How could I have been so stupid?" I screamed for the umpteenth time. I was stamping my feet furiously on my apartment floor, so much so that the framed photo of Orochimaru fell to the floor and the glass cracked. Not that I cared. The crack that stretched on the glass right between his eyes symbolized what I'd always wanted to do to that conniving old wretch since I met him.

BUT I'D LEFT IT! My thumb drive, my most essential data chip, my container of every last living piece of information relating to this lab's nine experiments—I'd left it at the lab! I'd left it there in one of my drawers in my office and just…just…left it! What the fuck is wrong with me! I need a goddamned lobotomy if I'm this dangerously stupid!

I'd carried that thing in my pocket for almost two years, always keeping it on me as Orochimaru had instructed. Like almost everything else he instructed, it was a wise decision and by some horrible coincidence in my hurry to leave work and get a good night's sleep for once, I'd just stuck it in a locked drawer and assumed that since everyone was on their toes due to the hassle with the released experiments, that drawer would suffice for its security! And now look what's happened.

I'd been watching the news for hours on end, sitting on my couch and staring and throwing temper tantrums and trying and failing to gather my thoughts on commercial breaks.

Lab E699 had been sabotaged. There were no survivors. The specially-made paint solution that made the building invisible had faded; salume dissolves in the presence of smoke, all employees knew that, and now here was the consequence. Everyone and anyone could see that six-story building in the middle of a national forest just _flaming _and _sitting _there. It was unmistakable—to an employee of a Chambers lab—what had happened.

All the investigators claimed that the fingerprints on the busted windows and claw marks on the walls were some kind of cross between humans and animals, and they varied, which allegedly meant that animals had run loose in the building _and _some very human, probably very rebellious little bastards had vandalized the place. Since this news reel had been playing since this morning, locals have already been interviewed on their opinions. No one had any idea how the building could just appear out of nowhere, and they were all scared out of their wits that different kinds of creatures had apparently, against all laws of nature, teamed up to cause the mayhem. The story was getting bigger and bigger, and bigger and bigger news stations were picking it up by the hour.

A Chambers employee—me—would know that these "different animal species" were the various experiments. The nine born in Lab E699. There were nine sets of fingerprints identified, (all of which turned up nothing in any criminal databases, how unusual) meaning all the males and Sakura had either teamed up to annihilate everyone in the building, or the eight had chased her into the building and destroyed it as they tried to catch her.

The former was extremely likely. No—the males' collars had all come off at the same time some days ago, proving teamwork, and soon after, a desire to leave Chambers. And the rumor that had bounced around the lab for years, that the males shared a liking for Sakura, was proven with it. Because they weren't intelligent enough to want anything beyond what they already knew existed. They would want Sakura and nothing else…The former was…completely true.

The second part was something I couldn't decide to be truly relieved or truly frightened about: all evidence of the experiments' existence had been destroyed in the flames…all except two bits of cruicial evidence. First was my external hard drive chip, which hadn't been found, which meant that one of the experiments _had stolen it _and secondly there was a logbook found in a third-story hallway, filled with entries dating back to before the birth of Number One. Dating back over fifteen years!

A logbook—why do I have to explain this to you fucking morons while I'm having a panic attack? I can't _handle this!_

A logbook…dammit I can barely breathe in all this stress…A logbook is something given to every person employed at one of the eleven secret labs of Chambers Incorporated. All scientists in charge of raising experiments like Sakura had one of these which they wrote in once a day, giving any notable information of the work they'd done that day. The logbook found was Hayate Gekko's. The eternally-sick rat was older than he looked and had been working at Lab E699 since before Number One was born. His logbook had notes and mentions of…of…everything!

It told of the processes used to create the experiments, their unique abilities, which experiment they got along with best, which diseases they were prone to and what vaccinations they'd been given and when…every piece of evidence needed to tell the world that the nine experiments did indeed exist and a very good idea on how to combat them.

I knew that at some point we'd end up sending them off to the some war-torn reason, probably the Middle East (Africa if the money was low) to deal with local terrorist trouble, and that the public would find out about them eventually, but why THIS way? Why did they have to find the experiment's life records in the midst of a burning building filled with dead bodies? Don't those stupid fucking animals realize that their fucking genocide is going to turn the public against them? Don't they realize that everyone who sees this news story is going to want them dead, not just the company?

The experiments have given themselves a horrible profile already, the burning building filled with corpses notwithstanding. Chambers Incorporated will be found out for its secret genetic experimentation…taken out of business by hungry neighbor corporations…stocks will plummet, money will be lost. The nine experiments will be caught and more than likely killed. Rivaling countries will see America's inner conflicts and take the initiative to attack us. Because the experiments destroyed the lab. Because they got free. Because Sakura flew away.

"And now we return you to Fox 4 News! The time is 4:40 PM, the theme is sci-fi and the mood is horror. Let's take a recap of what has been found in Tillamook National Forest, some fifty miles away from Portland, Oregon."

I scrambled back to my couch faster than greased lightning and I increased the volume by fifteen notches. I grasped my hair in my hands and it hurt and I just had to breathe and breathe and breathe.

"Thanks, Karen. A building has seemingly appeared in the middle of the forest, dead, destroyed and in flames. It's straight out of scif-fi TV show, as it literally made the building invisible unless one stands less than a hundred yards away from it, and is dissolved only by smoke and perhaps fire. Investigators have found nearly a hundred dead bodies inside, all adults wearing either laboratory coats or maintenance uniforms."

The bald man who had thanked Karen Fuller and explained everything was replaced by an hours-old camera feed of the inside of Lab E699. A shaky camera was moving through a battered and smoking hallway. I spotted Choza's head head against one wall, surrounded by a blooming splatter of blood like he'd been smashed onto the wall. The head had been blurred for violence censorship reasons and such but I could tell anyway. The camera turned into a room and I recognized Medical Checking Room 4, where Number Seven had often gone to have his gills checked for disease. Six smears of blood were on the wall, and there were two little claw marks on the doorknob. Papers and syringes and the binder full of formulas and the company's (illegal) injection policies were strewn all over the place. This was as significant as one fricking atom compared to the logbook.

I was shivering as the blonde (and fucking tacky) Karen Fuller went on to explain the "chilling sci-fi notebook" found in the building. An image of it appeared behind her as she talked at her fancy little tacky news desk. "Thanks, Tom. Frightening hundreds of locals and news viewers at the moment is the nicknamed "sci-fi notebook" found at the scene. It belonged to a man called Hayate Gekko, a resident of a Portland suburb near the forest and a native of Japan, whose ravaged body was found on the sixth floor."

The blonde went on, making me shiver more. "Within this notebook are records of the birth, rearing and training of nine alleged genetic experiments, referred to as Numbers 1 through 9 and often being called by their separate nicknames. Pictures are not included but descriptions are, Tom, and they describe superhuman beings with animal characteristics. One is allegedly half bull shark, six feet and five inches tall and powerful enough to lift an elephant over his head."

"You'd think this is all some freakish joke!" someone said offscreen, and it might have been Tom at his fancy little shit weatherman desk, or someone on a camera feed, but I didn't care one bit.

"Some are saying it is! That this story's just a hugely elaborate hoax and will be discredited next week, but unfortunately, it's not, Tom.

Karen Fuller's next horrible statements made me want to scream. I just stuck with biting the accenting pillows of my couch. "According to the last few entries, all these life-forms have gotten loose in the past week or so. The first to escape was the youngest and the only female of the group, called Number 9 and nicknamed Sakura. She is described as a petite human with pink hair and silver avian wings, capable of flight and human speech. What we have for our viewers right now is solid evidence that she has been spotted around the Portland area."

_What? _

Karen Fuller lifted her hand and on the screen behind her a photo appeared. It was a photo of divided into thirds and in each section was a photo of a child in hospital gowns: an angry blonde girl, a brunette boy and a redhead with closed—and black!—eyes.

"The late Tanaka Subaku is the father of these three orphans. Prior to being killed in a car crash on Interstate-5 six days ago, on January 10th, Mr. Subaku was an abusive father who beat his children and refused to feed them, leaving the eldest, Temari, to pickpocket and steal to feed herself and her brothers. The youngest brother, Gaara, had been in a state of muteness and near-sleeplessness prior to the crash putting him into a coma. The children were sent to Legacy Emanuel Hospital and Health Center together. The two eldest children, Temari and Kankurou, agreed to sell their story to Fox News last week, giving us their life story in exchange for treatment of their injuries and the promise of a foster home. Here is a quote from Kankurou Subaku."

The screen now showed Kankurou laying in a hospital bed being wheeled to some wing or a hospital or other. His legs were wrapped up in casts and you could hear his own voice playing. _"Temari was almost always the one to go out and get food. She told me she got it betting on horse races, jacking cars…stealing from ladies' purses… Anything to help us. She would get the food and I would comfort Gaara and try to do his jigsaw puzzles with him. It made him happy. When we went to sleep, Temari cried. Every night. I plugged Gaara's ears. Every night." _

Karen spoke again and dominated the screen with her blonde hair and goddamned flawless business suit. "The Subaku children's father was able to say one thing prior to dying from blood loss and severe injuries on the 10th. Here is what was recorded…"

Tanaka Subaku's image appeared on screen. Someone had filmed him at the crash. He panted and dribbled blood over his chin onto the grass beneath him. A flaming old truck was in the background and a fireman held Tanaka's head in his lap. He rasped in a chain smoker's gritty voice, _"Pink…girl…in the road. Girl with pink haaaaiiir!" _

"Additionally, one local police officer can testify that he found a silver feather at the scene of the crash. Officer Hiashi Hyuuga of Portland had carried the feather with him for only a few minutes when an unknown blonde assaulted him and seized the feather. Fellow officers and witnesses claim the blonde had blue wings, and if this is true, it would match the description of 'Number 5' in Hayate Gekko's notebook. Some would say this is sure-fire proof that the 'experiments' are roaming the Portland countryside. Back to you, Tom."

"Thanks, Karen! In addition to Karen's own addition, Channel 5 News has absolute proof that the persons behind this are in fact part of the incredibly monopolizing commercial empire, Chambers Incorporated." Tom looked like he was hiding a smile. He probably wasn't. But I was angry and wanted an excuse to beat the living shit out of him.

"One of the dead found in the laboratory was owner of the multi-billion-dollar corporation, the chilling and bubbly man of no legal last name, Orochimaru. In Mr. Gekko's notebook, he is referred to as 'The Director' which would imply he was in charge of all operations within the laboratory. His cause of death is unknown. His spinal cord has been severed despite there being no entry wound—"

CRACKK

The remote crashed into my television set. A web of cracks spread across Karen Fuller's face and all went static before dying. The hand that had thrown the remote twitched in anger and I struggled to keep myself from screaming, pulling my hair out and tossing the television out the window. I didn't care if I was acting like Orochimaru. I stood up, paced, deciding whether to destroy my apartment in anger or get online right now and get in touch with my contacts.

Details, details, details pounded in my head. _Are all the other employees of the lab dead? They saved Orochimaru for last because he's obviously most surprising to the public. If they didn't show Kabuto before him, does that mean he's still alive? _

_Where are the experiments now? _

_Are law enforcements going to offer rewards for the experiments' capture? Is the disbandment of Chambers Inc. going to cause an economic recession quickly or slowly? _

_Why didn't I keep watching to find out what they're going to do about it? _

It didn't matter now. My television was fucked and so was I. The other eleven laboratories, or at least some of them, are going to act like fucking chickens and claim Orochimaru was_ forcing_ them to create the genetic experiments and tell the law that I was involved in the first discovered laboratory. I'll go to jail for the rest of my life. I'll get raped in jail. I'll wear an ugly fucking _orange _stereotypical uniform and be listening to roll call every day.

My name will be in history as the associate of the most conniving, monopolizing man on earth. My family will hate me for as long as they live. All my possessions will be taken from me. Every cent I've earned will be put into taxes that will come to arrest me in the form of police squadrons. If I escape there will be "Wanted" posters with my picture and information on them. _Because of Sakura. _

That little fucking rat. She's done everything from the start. My world—hell, the _entire _world!—will crumble to ruin because she flew away that day. Society will fall into economic depression and war because of her. She couldn't take the easy way, the human way out and just _die, _no, she had to have a life and be free and so much other shit I still couldn't believe…

I wasn't going to be ruined because of her. I still had a chance. One chance to feel satisfied before I took my trip to hell. I had spent my entire life climbing the social and wealth chains to reach the position of Director. I should have become Director, had Orochimaru had a heart attack or some other such piece of good luck. I should have stood far above all those fucking bugs I had to step on to get where I am now. No. I was still close enough to those bugs—Kabuto, Yuugao, Orochimaru, Genma—to gag at their fucking stench.

Well, I was taking that chance. I was make myself happy, stand above _everyone, _just for a minute, before I died or was sentenced to execution. If I could just…give Sakura one good punch…no…one good _bullet to the head_—I could die happy. If I could show that rebellious rat that she was nothing more than the result of several dreary months' pay and the imagination of a fucked-up Director…I really could die happy.

I flipped my laptop open. I had to email my contacts. I needed help if I was going to do this.

666

Is Karin going insane, thinking she can give Sakura a quick, painful bitch-slap/bitch-gunshot-wound before her life goes down the tubes? Perhaps. Is Sakura going to go downstairs and find Zetsu gulping down the baking soda? Perhaps.

This was delayed a lot because I've randomly decided to start writing a second novel recently and I wanted to just post what I had and satisfy you a little instead of make you wait even longer. The new novel is unrelated to the one I've been working on for years and I'm wondering all the time if it's worth it to drop the first project, the big awesome one I've been dreaming about since like age _nine_ for this one that just suddenly came up and sounded good at the time. Also my summer vacation ends on August 19th, and I sure ain't looking forward to it. Enjoy this as much as you can…when Airborne gets another chapter, StormDragon666 shall be an official sophomore.

**EDIT, December 2011: **I admit that when I first wrote this chapter I used it as a bit of an excuse to show how a news channel might cover the story of the exposed laboratory. I thought it'd be quite interesting to see on television...which is why I basically had you read it twice, at the cousin's home and at Karins. Ha.

I also confess to adding a little more leniency on Sakura's part in this edit. Meaning, I made her see Kakashi's side a little more, and think about him a little less...horribly. One of the major complaints I got in this story way back when was that Sakura's hatred and fear for the male experiments was never-ending, no matter how much happened, how many chapters there were, etc., and my rebuttal was usually "She's had eight years to assume they are evil, how much can she change in a week?" but on the other hand, yeah, she should give a _little _more than she did. So now she does.

Ta…Storm


	21. Twentyfirst

**EDIT, December 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful college student with friends and an actual life, (though fanfiction still triumphs) and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through to meet the bar of her current writing skills...and then update the story. YAY.

(Also, when I first posted this chapter, remember that I had just become a sophomore in high school. Do not underestimate the writing- and brain-power of the occasional capable freshman! End edit note.)

Congrats to me, I'm a sophomore. I'm back to my usual daily dilemma of being afraid of not having a seat on the bus because I'm the last person to get on. On he good side, I adore my Chinese and German classes, German especially, since we've all done this for over two years, all together, so we all moderately know each other, share inside jokes, etc (except I'm the shy, bookworm loser so I laugh at the jokes but can hardly ever tell them for fear of being scrutinized D': ) Unfortunately, we're not even a week into school and already my old-but-very-loved-and-popular German teacher has assigned a presentation. I do not look forward to presenting a project in front of this one kid who threw food at me last year and also ran his fingers through my hair twice. Yeegh.

This is some girl's typical high school monologue. What are _your _pros and cons?

Chapter the Twenty-first!

666

January 16th, I think close to 6:00 in the evening. ...Sakura POV

666

You know what? I think God decided to give me a break today. And I am _so dang thankful._

I didn't think things could possibly go this smoothly. The day has passed swimmingly. Yes, swimmingly! What a word! It makes me want to go swimming! Alas, there's no pool here! But anyway. I'm still happy.

First, after leaving Kakashi to read the walk-in closet of information on Karin's data chip, I went downstairs expecting to see Zetsu gulping down baking soda in the kitchen…but he wasn't. He, Neji and Itachi had put their two-and-two-thirds brains together and figured out how to work a microwave. When I went down I could see that it had two minutes left to go, and a rack of lamb chops or ribs or something of that shape was being heated inside it. Kakuzu had been quite emphatic about how to and how not to grill things (read: set on fire) and what foods were better cooked in what methods. They were going against his rules, but the food looked okay and they were complacent and occupied, so I let the matter alone. Already, three fewer demons to worry about.

Well, except for the implicit possibility that one or more of those three are literate enough to read instructions on a package of food, which is probably more of a con than a pro. Or maybe they ripped off the plastic and shoved it into a shiny box just 'cause. Duly noted.

So those three experiments fed themselves that way. All the others came into the kitchen whenever they pleased. All decided that cereal in a bowl with a spoon was as complex a thing as they could handle. They had left the Lucky Charms and Rice Chex boxes open but returned them to their proper shelves, and even rinsed out their bowls before putting them on the drying rack. I can't imagine that a quick rinse cleans the bowls of their fugly germs and fingerprints, but the effort alone is impressive.

Most of them found little ways like this to keep occupied and relaxed. And what did I do during this time, you might ask? I drifted in between rooms all day long. I was in the kitchen supervising the eatery activities, Kakuzu's room reading the experiment data when he was done—more on that later—Hidan's room for peace and quiet because I'd found a copy of _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets _in Kakuzu's room and his cousin's room was the best place to sneak some reading time, the garage because the two blonde experiments kept asking me for demonstrations on the power tools, (HAHAHA no.) the bathroom to use toothpaste and to teach Zetsu how to use toothpaste on his frigging pointy teeth and the basement because the tennis ball Kisame found fell down there and the living room because most everybody spent the day in there watching television and throwing an old football they found all around the room. Excuse me while I take a breath. GAAAASP.

Okay, the television-watching and football-throwing are the most notable things, hands down. I'd watched television when I hung out with the cousins, so the sight of Spongebob Squarepants, Judge Judy and Eric Cartman weren't quite as amazing to me as they were the first time. The guys were totally mesmerized.

They spent most of the morning getting familiar with _Dora the Explorer _and they answered her when she asked where the bucket/tree/house was. And they said "map" when she told them to. I bit my tongue to not laugh.

And then the football thing, because…it was just weird to see _them_ doing this activity that was so common for boys. Turns out Sasori can catch the football in his scorpion tail and Itachi and Kakashi can catch it with their backs turned. Kisame can also catch it in his mouth without his razor teeth popping the poor pigskin, which everybody thought was pretty cool and spoke of admirable control. Even Sakura the Uptight Biotch thought so.

Sometime in between these activities, around lunchtime, Kakashi tapped me on the shoulder. I deduced it was him simply because I could hear the voices and activities of all the others, and slammed my hand backward till I hit his chest. He stood there for a moment, aware of my threat to stop his heart if he tried anything dangerous. He calmly told me that tomorrow night, once everyone was rested and we'd have the cover of night again, that a few of us should go by Karin's home, which was somewhere in this city, and try to find out where she'd gone. I thought it was wiser to go now, to not waste time and give Karin ample opportunity to escape to the ends of the earth.

Unfortunately, he's right about us needing to be rested and strong. I mean, we've been raised on food pills and water and only recently had to deal with true, genuine cold for the first time. We were still getting our strength up, for the first time in our lives. Better attack her at full strength than at a third strength and risk recapture, imprisonment, torture, punishments which include but are not limited to forced blindness and starvation and removal of limbs or even death if they feel like it and did you realize that he's right yet?

Kakashi went around telling this to his fellow experiments, instead of calling a dark, solemn meeting like I'd been sort of fearing. The plan was established, and we had the rest of the night and all day tomorrow to rest up and…do whatever else we wanted that didn't trash the cousins' house. Watching movies and playing indoor games of catch turned out to be good choices.

Feeling the need to get the male experiments attention off me for a good, long while, I fetched a movie for them to watch, something flashy and attention-grabbing that would hold their eyes for a long time..._Inception_ it is.

I almost feel like pouting that I can't re-watch this masterpiece with them. But I need my relaxation time too, and I won't be able relax if there are clawed beasts nearby. I put the movie in and gave them a good, detailed description of what was what and how dreams were said to work in this story, and that no, you couldn't go into dreams like Leonardo DiCaprio does, not even Chambers can do that or have invented the needed technology, yes this is real life and no the movie is not, and yes, popcorn is what you're supposed to eat during movies and I will make some for you.

It was kind of a scary sight, my nightmares all sitting together in this average American room watching a movie. Kisame and Neji, the ones who really liked playing catch, got up often to throw the football to each other with their eyes on the TV screen, something I thought showed some seriously good coordination from those guys. Besides that, they tried popcorn—I think they all liked it except Kakashi who made a gagging sound—and watched the very long movie, giving me time to sit in the nearby kitchen and read my book in peace.

Sometimes I shook things up a bit and went upstairs to sit in one of the cousins' rooms to read. I switched back and forth because I couldn't decide which I liked better. Hidan's ruffled bedsheets and junk on the floor seemed amusing and homey, but Kakuzu's clean and small room felt cozy, simple, even safe.

With all this, my mind felt weirdly…at ease. I didn't usually have so little to think of. Just my book and them and their movie. (For the sake of my sanity I wasn't thinking of Hidan and Kakuzu coming home to a house full of murderers, Chambers Incorporated now probably intent on destroying all of us with their mercenaries and beyond-invincible technology, and Karin and Kabuto both alive and well and doing god knows what. One thing at a time, for now.)

But in this house, this little shell of temporary simplicity…it was really relaxing.

I actually got halfway through _Chamber of Secrets _before the movie ended, and I loved every word of it. Not just the story, the tale, the words that created the movies that the cousins and I had watched, but the fact that I was reading a book just astounded me. Reading the nutrition labels on the TV dinners downstairs, and the captions on movies, and the warning labels on a bottle of Tylenol just do _not _compare to reading a good book. It felt so good. It was so peaceful and so warm, like the day after I'd escaped Chambers and spent the morning playing in a river in the woods. So perfect it was almost surreal. I had to put a stop to it myself before an experiment did it for me and soiled it.

What I did was simply get of Kakuzu's bed and move over to his computer. I had long since seen that the data chip had been left inside and inspected it for strange fingerprints; Kakashi hadn't so much as touched it. The window full of information on us was still open. All the icons for the experiments, save mine, were grey. My white icon meant that Kakashi hadn't clicked on mine and hadn't read my information. Well congratulations on keeping a promise, Wolverine. I'll just take...over from here.

Did I just compliment him? That almost hurts inside. It hurts because that goes directly against everything I've ever thought, every belief I've ever had. But the sad fact was, that didn't matter now. I had to read my profile before _Inception _ended and some lonely experiment decided to come up here and pretend to be interested in cuddling and playing.

I clicked mine first, of course. I saw my own picture. My hands were bound in front of me with shackles that looked like plastic but were truly metal. The sight of my old shock collar made me want to throw up. That thing was dead and gone and in a scrap heap by now, I told myself. It couldn't ever hurt me again. It was a piece of malfunctioning crap and was gone forever. But in this picture, it was still keeping me prisoner. I still had my usual outfit of a comfy grey tee and white shorts that covered a fraction of my thighs. I looked curiously into the camera. I remembered having that photo taken some months ago. I remembered being surprised at seeing the camera. Faking my usual unintelligent face wasn't hard.

My information was nothing I didn't already know, sadly. I was a good swimmer and had mastered using my wings as paddles. I could hold my breath for some four minutes without showing any distress, had been mute all my life, and had the strength of an ox or two but was too stupid to realize and utilize it more than a few times a year. I was incredible fast and agile and none of the male experiments had ever successfully captured or pinned or even touched me in the so-called "Combat Trials" in the white rooms. Nothing about my ability to create electricity was mentioned, nor about my true intelligence. This data had apparently not been updated since I'd escaped the lab.

I went through all the males in turn, and found a new and interesting fact or two in each one. Kakashi's left eye was almost exactly the same as both of Itachi's, having the same hypnotic power that science couldn't yet explain. Sasori liked to sun himself under heated lamps, Itachi wouldn't let anyone but himself brush his hair, Zetsu could live off of sunlight and seawater if he had to, Deidara would willingly kill any creature set before him unless it was a baby bird, Neji had X-ray vision (actually I'd already known this one) Kisame caught some sort of sickness almost once a month, and Naruto was known to purr in his sleep.

There was nothing _crucial, _though. No life-threatening weaknesses, no horrible strengths I didn't already know about. This chip was almost completely useless except it told me exactly how tall each experiment was and how much they weighed. Each page of information had at the top the experiment's name, height and weight and I guess a fun fact from there would be that Neji was the lightest of them all at a hundred and fifty-five… I wasn't sure if that made him underweight, but it may explain why I saw him eating three bowls of cereal earlier today.

Movement on the stairs. Someone was coming up. Someone slow and heavy. Kisame, I guessed.

I turned in the swivel chair and crossed my legs and arms. Tried to look intimidating. As best a five-five girl of around eighty pounds and partially hollow bones can. Also pink hair. Okay, my intimidation factor is zilch, forget it.

And Kisame it was. He'd taken off the heavy black cloak the workers at Chambers had given him and in a rather loose and long-sleeve blue shirt with buttons. He didn't look quite as intimidating as he usually did. He came into the room slowly, twice averting his gaze from mine and that I found especially strange. I was wary immediately.

He held out to me a square thing I didn't recognize, at least for the first five seconds or so. It was a DVD case, I saw. On it was an enormous tree and a little girl. _Pan's Labyrinth, _it was called. I remember hearing some employees talk about it many months ago when I was still a mute prisoner. My interest had been piqued at the time. Nothing but words of praise and awe had been said, and Kakuzu had lauded it, too. "I heard Yuugao talking about this once." Kisame said. I was kind of surprised that he'd heard about this thing, probably the same time I did.

He rambled off a summary, pocketed with pauses and awkward areas. He was trying to tell me about the main character, a little girl in the war-torn Spain who is approached by a magical creature and told to complete three tasks to prove she is a princess, and all the reasons why the film is nowhere _near _as childish as the summary sounds, but...well...yeah, pauses and awkwardness. He's nervous. Around me. What the heck does that mean? He finished with, "What I heard about it before, made me think you would like it and I still think you would."

Well, dang. Kisame didn't give a mantra about trust and affection. That alone had my attention, and when he handed me the movie my attention was doubled. The little pictures on the back held my interest immediately and I felt sort of glad to have heard about this movie before. I also felt confused: Way back when, in the days when he thought he knew me and thought we were friends, he thought I'd like this movie, and he still does, when he knows I hate him and can't stand to be in a room with him? Why does he still think that?

"I thought that if it interested you, you might want to watch it because Itachi and Sasori fell asleep right after_ Inception _ended and Kakashi's reading some magazine in the kitchen with his eyes half-closed. I thought maybe you'd feel kind of safer with the more threatening and smarter men unconscious." The guy grinned at me and put his hands in his pockets.

Out of politeness I gave a little grin back. "I guess you're right. And I do want to watch this. There's no end to how many people adore and are awed by it." And how to break it to him that that doesn't make him any better than the others? I'm glad the smart fellas are out like lights now, but that doesn't mean I like dumber guys better.

"Yeah, I know you still have trust issues and that's fine, you do or think what you need to. I came up with something that could go along your terms." And he said that like he was proud of it. It was a weird thing to see on burly, _huge _Kisame: a humble sort of pride, like he'd never been proud before. I must have looked like I was genuinely interested in his idea. In truth it was just his facial expression, the contrast between this dangerous behemoth and the idea of humility. It was like oil and water.

"My idea is…yeah, this sounds screwy but the idea is that you sit next to me at the end of the sofa, with me to one side and the armrest to your other. That way if someone jumps you or something," he said this like it was just fucking _stupid,_ "you have a super slow-moving brute on one side and all that room to escape on the other. But I already told the guys not to touch you or anything during the movie. I don't think they would have anyway. The only ones left awake to jump you are Naruto and Deidara, who are damn morons, Neji who's got a weak spot on his collarbone, and Zetsu who…uhhm…shit. Can't think of one for him. Will you come?"

He just sounds so _awkward. _And dammit, he's really pleading with me. He's pleading me to watch a movie. Like that's what he really wants.

Why can't they just slice my stomach open and crush my skull and tear up my wings and claw out my eyes and _get it over with? _

So much for being comrades in this mission to destroy Chambers. They're ruining my peace of mind. The scraps of peace of mind that I had gathered. I liked those scraps. Another two or three of them had just blown away in the breeze again. But his plan made solid sense. It's not something I expected from Kisame. What I'd expected from Kisame always went something like "HULK SMASH!" and I could see no loopholes, plotholes or any other kind of hole in this plan. And I really did want to watch _Pan's Labyrinth. _

"Yes, I'll come down. Let's go set it up."

"Do you know how?" he asked hopefully. "'Cause uh…since Kakashi screwed up the television earlier today I don't trust anyone else with the DVD player."

This actually made me laugh. Genuinely, truly. "Yeah, I can do it. I'll show you, it's not hard." I walked past him, scared for my life—I brushed his arm with mine!—and heard him following behind. He started to say, "And I know this may sound really rude or incessant or something, but I don't really know how to make the p—"

"Just put the popcorn package in the microwave and set it for two minutes. Abra-kadabra."

"Thank you!" Kisame said. I could feel him grinning behind me. It didn't feel too terribly frightening. Not as much as usual. I think it was just anticipation of the movie getting to me. I guess.

666

January 16th, 8:22 PM, so says the wristwatch I took from Kakuzu Zashi's bedroom. ...Itachi POV

666

Kakashi and I were at the front door of the house and thankfully our clothes camouflaged us for the most part in the night. He was panting, had turned his back to me so he could comfortably pull down his scarf and pant like an overheated dog. He used ten to fifteen seconds for this, and then replaced the scarf over his face and nose. his red eye and black eye gleamed at me.

"Ready to go in?" he said, still panting a bit.

I glanced at the worn notepad he held in his hand like the long-lost cure for a disease. Only for first few pages had anything written on them and he'd been sure not to let his fingers touch the pencil strokes, lest they smear or fade them. All I said was, "As best I can be," for that was the truth. We didn't know what our friends would think of what we'd done these past few hours. Most had been busying themselves in the cheery American business of watching a movie or sleeping and I thought only Sasori and Sakura, attentive souls, would notice we were gone. Sakura would be scared that we were missing, but we would soothe her. We had successfully found and entered Karin's home in the city and obtained this book from it. We were successful and we were coming home again. We had seen cars and pedestrians and streetlights for the first time, so we were awed as well.

He reached for the knob and went inside. I looked around the neighborhood for witnesses, with my eyes hot and prepared to burn through the brain of any passersby. Perhaps that's too strong a phrase. I'll only put them to sleep temporarily, but thankfully there's no one to perform this on. I followed Kakashi inside and closed the door behind me. It was quite heated inside, too great a change from the cold of January outside. I unzipped my jacket and held it in my arm. Even the mass-producted grey shirt that Chambers gave me to wear seemed too hot.

The kitchen was to my right and I only glanced in that direction. Kakashi headed that way and briefly patted Sasori on the arm, who held a small and thin booklet in his hand, perhaps a magazine. Kakashi did not show our friend Karin's notepad, only took it with him to the sink as he searched for a cup to fill with water.

I turned to the right, away from the kitchen and into the living room, where the television showed a moving list of white names on a black background while a rather exquisite and sorrowful tune played through the speakers. These were the credits, and they signaled the end of a movie, the point when people stop paying attention. my friends had dissolved into talking and playing, but I listened to the song I heard. It was intriguing. Exquisite. Why did they not listen, too?

Sometime during that fine song I saw Kisame and Sakura sitting together on the large couch. Deidara sat on the smaller armchair to the side and Neji and Naruto sat together on the floor. Zetsu stood behind the armchair, nearest me, his flytrap currently disappeared from his shoulders and his eyes looking hypnotized. It seemed everyone was now entranced by the song.

Sakura's head shot up and she looked directly at me—and I could not resist purring, in fact, I relished that instinctual response—and I felt the questioning in her brilliant gaze. Of course, I saw it, too, for Sakura's eyes had always been full of vivacity and expression and what she could not put to words could more than likely be put into her eyes.

"Where did you go?" she queried gravely, having just realized Kakashi and I had been out in the streets of Portland for the past hour or two. "I...I had no idea. The others insisted again and again that I wait for you."

She longed for me, I thought, and then realized it was a foolish thought. She had missed knowing where I was, what I was planning. She does very much dislike not knowing what's going on. She hates not having all the knowledge.

"Karin's apartment, on the south side of the city," I said, moving up till only the back part of the couch separated us. The others were still hypnotized by the rolling credits and lullaby-sound. "We also dropped by Anko's home and took her cat and dropped it at her sister's doorstep on the other side of town. I personally saw her take the animal into her house. Smiling." I knew she'd think something of that. Back in the lab, when we all had done what we pleased and killed whichever Chamber employee we came across, I had secretly glimpsed her gazing at a photo on Anko's desk, of the woman and her fat cat sitting on a carpeted floor. I had suspected Sakura had wanted to make sure the cat didn't starve what with its owner being stabbed to death. So I did something to make her smile.

Judging by the look on her sweet, young face she was shocked if not disturbed I had thought and done all of that. It's probably "terrifying" to think a monster like me could have such foresight, in the name of a starving kitten. To distract her from it I added, "I know Kakashi told you a few of us would be going to Karin's apartment to see if there were any worthwhile items hidden there."

She looked away, looking sheepish, looking adorable, and looked back at me again, saying, "I—I was under the impression that I'd be going as well, or there'd be no point in telling me it was going on."

Still she had that set in her mind. That we were keeping information from her, that we harbored a secret desire to _maul _her. God only knew how long this would take to erase, even with seven others helping me push the message across to her. "We're all together for a common cause and everyone's help and input can be used. Why shouldn't we tell you what we're doing…?" ('Little_ one,' _I almost added.)

Her eyes turned a shade darker and she sighed a bit. "You know why…"

She thought we knew and thought a lot of things that were utter nonsense. I told her so. "No, I don't. Your entire thought process concerning us is a lie and one day you will see that. And we will keep telling you how wrong you are until you believe us."

The expression in the little one's eyes said in bold and italic letters that she didn't believe me.

The expression in her eyes changed suddenly to shock and surprise. She raised her hands to catch the notepad which Kakashi had thrown in her direction. Sakura flipped through the notepad immediately and her eyes went wide upon seeing the information written on the first three pages. The eerie, sad lullaby still played on the DVD and the others watched the credits, transfixed, save for Kisame, who was now looking at Sakura and the notepad.

"This is her handwriting for sure. Flawless cursive, _i_'s with no dots…" Her eyes flashed with what I knew from years of hopeless gazing as her analyzing something. The credits and the music drew to a close as she read and re-read the information scribbled on the pad.

After a minute or so she sighed again. "Six dozen professional mercenaries, I'm betting."

The notepad had six dozen names written on it, each name backed by a few letters. The first name, for example, was "Keith Griggs, GAS". Kakashi and I hadn't talked about what we thought the names were; we left Karin's apartment as soon as we could, leaving—we hoped—no fingerprints and no sign that we'd ever been there. But mercenaries had been my first thought on those names as well.

"I recognize some of these names." she noted, drawing a small finger down the second page. "Keith Griggs I've heard several times. For years. And Mustapha Mond. Vladislav Krimi. Lara Rassil." She sighed again and her wings drooped the slightest bit, barely sinking into the couch cushions and for that tiny reaction I wished to take away and hide this thing that depressed her. I could not. Not now.

Her next laugh was grim, caustic. "She's out to kill us. Or at least recapture us. Only these people here would have any chance at either one. Even if Orochimaru's dead, Karin still has her connections and people who will follow her lead. I'll have to assume all of these people are going to do what she tells them to."

'_Recapture us?' _I felt foolish for believing that our death was the only option. Recapture had seemed silly in my mind until Sakura herself said it. The only thing worse than death was a return to Chambers, a return to cold and cruel scientists who knew _everything _we were capable of, and would never allow us another opportunity to be free again. They would taunt and prod and destroy us. They would know we at last had nothing left.

"What do you think would happen if we just walked outside one day in the city and…waved to people?" Naruto was speaking now. He still eyed the moving credits. "Like, we just go into a restaurant or a bank something? Someplace people will see?

"They'd scream, I suppose." Sakura shrugged. "Large groups of humans who don't understand something are prone to mass panic. If we went anywhere public, the police station would probably be best. Anyone who saw us would be capable and marginally armed, though not enough to really present a physical challenge, I think. I think doing that might make us look...civilized. It would definitely minimize panic if people knew we were sitting in a room full of society's protectors."

"Turn ourselves in—?" Kisame gaped.

"Are you sure their training would be just...'marginally'?" Naruto asked. No one commented on his improper conjugation, though surely Sakura and I weren't the only ones irritated by it.

"I do." she said. "As prepared as any local law enforcement likes to think they are, or even _actually _are, it probably won't match up to the things we've challenged and beaten. Did any of you go through the snipers' trial?" Several of us nodded. Only Neji, for some reason, had been spared that trial, a seemingly endless chain of guns installed in the walls, whose projectiles we had to dodge or have our limbs shattered through by bullets. Some policemen would be simple in comparison.

Kisame stopped gaping.

All the cool confidence and composure on Sakura's face then, as she looked at me…I had an inkling most of it was false. Not that she felt her idea was weak, but her confidence in looking me in the eye was still weak. I held her gaze evenly and tenderly. When she looked away from me, whenever she was ready, I would kindly and gently allow her away. "I thought it was important that we make ourselves public before Kabuto or Karin could create horrible reputations for us. And if not that, at the very least we need the public on our side, and not wanting us dead or used for study."

With perfect clarity I recalled the news broadcast we had seen that morning shortly after arriving at this house. The discovery of the burning Chambers lab in the middle of the Oregon woods, and the dead bodies and equipment inside it. Every continent should have heard of it by now, if not most people around the world with an internet connection.

"My thoughts exactly…" Neji said absently, staring at the television. "This will be the only night we put it off. Even if Karin were spreading lies about us now, it could not reach everywhere, to every person, in only a few hours."

"For that, we're especially lucky she's laying low right now." Sakura said quietly. "And that she could go to jail for life for her crimes. This makes it a lot harder for her to spread anything publicly."

Neji quieted and his ghost-eyes met mine unsurely. He knew our plan of action was not his choice, and for him to make a decision himself, unless asked to, was frowned upon. I, however, knew what was to happen. "In the morning we'll go again to the lab and find another information source. Presently we don't know where Kabuto or Karin are, or the location of any of the other laboratories. Our search this morning could hardly be called thorough."

Sakura cocked a pink eyebrow at me. Her silent question was easy enough to understand. Was it truly necessary for us to go to the site of our recent massacre of defenseless, if appallingly cruel, humans? The last place a wolf needed to be seen was the farm where a lamb was missing.

"There's no other choice." I reminded them all. "Anko's apartment was empty of anything useful and there is no other place to learn any information we need to move on. If we don't go there soon, Karin's mercenaries will start seeking us out. Even if she is in hiding, they will look everywhere for us."

Naruto tried to halt his growling. It sounded a bit whiny to me. Complaining, frightened. It even sounded complaining and frightened when he said, "I wanna go to sleep. Sakura, can I sleep on the floor?"

Naturally she appeared surprised that he would ask to take the floor as a sleeping place. Naruto had spent most nights of his life on a cot in his cell, and there were three comfortable beds upstairs and an arm chair and sofa right here in this room. I, too, wondered why he do this. Obviously not to let his elders have the comfortable spots.

"I…Well, I think you can sleep anywhere so long as you don't tear up the upholstery or the sheets…or the carpet…" This made Naruto quite ecstatic and he rushed to the back of the living room to the closet, where there was a vacuum cleaner, several rank jackets, and a pair of blankets. I didn't stay long enough to see what he did with them but I heard a plop on the ground which may have been him dropping them. Soon enough everyone would find a place to sleep.

This night would be the most secure and comfortable most of us had ever had. Beds and blankets..._beds. _Such mythical objects until today.

I admit that it made me a bit giddy to finally have such luxuries. I was told how to use the shower, the washing machine, even the toothbrush. And once I had performed all of a human's nightly preparations, I selected one of the bedrooms for myself. It was rather cluttered, but anyone can tell you I am not particularly choosy in my sleeping places. Deidara was asleep on the floor of this room. I stepped over him and claimed the bed as mine.

Before sleeping, though, I stood up again and, as though it would protect me from danger, locked the door.

One last human measure...just for...fun.

666

January 17th, 9:01 AM ...Sakura POV

666

Last night had actually been kind of nice. Peaceful. How odd.

All the guys started taking up random sleeping places, from Hidan's bed to the beanbag chair in the guest room to the kitchen table to the stairs. (Yes, the stairs. Zetsu sprawled his body out on the steps and slept…diagonally.) Me? I went into Kakuzu's room and slept on his bed without covering myself with the sheets. Partially because I was warm enough, what with the bed being right next to a heating vent and also because it would be easier to get out of there without tangling myself in bedsheets. Kakuzu's room was a strategic spot, as his door squeaked terribly at even the tiniest crack of movement. Whether it was slow and deliberate or a sudden slam, it made hella noise and it would wake me up if anyone tried to come in or even bumped the door while walking in the hall.

My dream that night was absolutely weird. Usually my dreams were normal life stuff mixed in with a single weird element, for example, Karin screaming and bitching like usual but screaming and bitching in a foreign language. But nope, this was just a straight-up symbolic nightmare. Poetic evil.

This dream showed me a pair of unfamiliar blonde boys running along a road in the steaming desert. Every now and then they faded in and out like they were holograms, and they became horrified and distressed when this happened, running faster and faster till they were solid again. The first boy disappeared completely when exhaustion caught up to him and he collapsed. The second boy didn't stop running, if anything he went even faster. Even so he evaporated into nothingness and I had the sense that these two boys were the last humans, and beyond this silent road in the desert there was nothing and no one left at all. It made me want to sit in a dark room and rock back and forth.

I woke up slowly and groggily but gladly, because the sight of Kakuzu's immaculately clean room were a relief from the feeling of frightful blankness, the lack of anything, that the dream left me with. Kakuzu's bedside clock told me 8:09 PM.

What the heck. This means I slept nearly eleven hours. This...wow. And just last week, I had never been allowed to sleep for more than four hours at a time. And now I'm like a regular person! That's so cool! But moving on.

Kakuzu's bed is comfy. I completely went against my previous rule about not getting dangerously tangled up in sheets, and pulled one of them up over me. A blanket over my bare legs, my bare arms and cool wings. It wasn't quite as thick as the one I snuggled in while Hidan and I watched the Shawshank Redemption, but it was nice. It was clean. I lay covered with it for a little while longer before putting it back and lumbering outside to take a warm (looovely~) shower. My clothes had been washed in the cousins' washing machine last night (and I had to wear Kakuzu's shirt. Zetsu...hissed at me when he saw.)

Speaking of fugly little black-and-white monsters, I found one still sprawled on the staircase. Zetsu was still there, his venus flytrap-thing still gone. I was curious, I admit. Where the hell was it? Was it still there but in the form of gas or water vapor particles or something? I wanted to hover my hand around his head to see if I could feel anything that might signify its presence, but didn't dare. He could be waiting for that. I just jumped over him. Which was quite epic, since it meant I jumped over all the stairs. I landed soft, tanks to a few wing-flaps.

This left me just in front of the front door. Kitchen to one side, living room the left. Deidara and Neji were sitting on the kitchen table, muttering with their heads bowed, looking half-asleep. I stood by the stairs and pretended to be occupied with another book while the others took turns using the shower, learning what a toothbrush was, and listening as I gave them the "don't eat the stuff under the sink" lecture. Which was unproductive because I really wanted them to eat the stuff under the sink. It appeared that only I had woken up feeling even marginally rested. Maybe I was also the only one who had been forced to sleep only four hours back in the lab. It would make sense. I was the only one who'd been housed in a dog crate, after all. Luxuries are clearly for men.

Half of them looked ready to fall asleep again but since sleepy time was over I decided to be super-nice and make coffee for them. Kakuzu was very emphatic that it made you wake up in the morning and many people were thankful for it. In the few minutes that took, Sasori and Deidara appeared to wake up a bit more and only appeared half-surprised when I handed them cups full of coffee. I hadn't added anything to it, so I guess it was to be called "black," which means coffee with nothing mixed in it. Right?

"Is this the stuff that Kabuto would always drink in the morning?" Naruto had asked me when I gave him some. He had replaced his black Chambers shirt with a black-and-orange jacket from the cousins' closet. I thought it looked nice.

"Yes and no. He did drink coffee but I can't guess how he drank it. What things he put inside like milk or sugar, or something else."

"What's in it?" Neji had yawned.

The can had said "French roast." Of course, it didn't tell me what was roasted. Or what made it French. Did I just feed them snails? That would be...satisfying. "I'm not sure, honestly. Besides coffee beans."

"They make beans for this stuff?"

In the very same moment, composed Sasori and humble Kisame took a sip and spat it violently into the sink. "Blerrrgh" noises ensued and I laughed out loud. I wasn't the only one, either. But I was the last one to stop and what I heard when my silence came around was Naruto purring at me.

"Your laugh's really cute." he said, and while Kisame continuing "blegh"-ing I nodded and made some excuse to go upstairs and be away from their freaky eyes that turned my stomach into knots. I sat in Hidan's room and looked through his Pokemon book (this is a game, right? I will not actually see a Garbodor in real life, will I?) for a few minutes and then came back down.

The new scene was other experiments trying out coffee and talking about the things they'd seen on TV the day before, chiefly the news segment on our own destruction of the laboratory, and Dora and Boots. Before I went back to the living room, I saw them adding salt to their coffee while the similar-looking sugar canister sat innocently by. Well, that's what you get for not knowing how to read. Or are you just doing another one of your subtle tricks, male experiments? Whatever. I'm outta here.

I turned on the TV again and found a news channel, where a reporter was thoroughly deconstructing Chambers Incorporated after various laptops, papers and Id cards had been found in the lab, smothered with the company's data and logos. The managers of various Chambers outlet stores and CEOs of its higher branches were being harassed for answers. Unfortunately for the reporters, their ignorance was real. Very few employees of Chambers Incorporated knew of the company's secret plan to build war machines like us. I turned it off before anyone else could come see. It would be a delight to share, but we have things to do. And this'll be on the news for a frikkin' long time.

Back in the kitchen, Kakashi was stretching his arms up. He groggily said, "Ohhhh-kay. Ah. Tired. Mm. Sakura…you know the way better than any of us. I tried to memorize most of it yesterday morning but I got distracted after that second four-way intersection."

Well, of course responsibility falls on me. Bring on the anxiety and the doubt and the pressure! I could totally get into a knife fight with guys named Anxiety, Doubt and Pressure and win. But this time, if I didn't act wisely, I could cause car wrecks and property damage. Maybe I take them on the wrong route or speed them across a road at the wrong time. Pressure. Pressure. I could deal with pressure, I had always dealt with pressure. The coffee-induced laughter from minutes before was forgotten.

My voice sounded nothing like Sir Leader Kakashi's. "I remember the route, definitely. I can get us there." I said, totally not sweating at all the gazes locked on me. "Someone will have the watch all the intersections with me. It's be easier to have more than one pair of eyes on the cars."

You know what? I'm gonna keep it short on the trip to the Chambers lab. The thing is, we all traveled in shadow except for the few experiments who looked mildly human. Naruto could press his ears so flat to his skull they could melt into his hair, and it was no problem to tuck his tail into the back of his pants, so he just walked along the sidewalk some ways behind us looking like a normal guy. Neji could do just the same and walked with him and Kakashi too, since he didn't look animalistic at all. The rest of us walked in almost-single-file and alternated between super-speed walking and running so fast the other people on the sidewalk thought us an illusion. I hope. In the meantime, most of the experiments were having their first-ever experience of walking in...well, society, but their wonderment and first-time-at-Disneyworld-euphoria would have to wait. We were off. In broad daylight. Aren't I an effing genius.

I'd rather not elaborate on how we almost made a semi smash a little kid and his soccer ball, so let's just say we arrived in the Tillamook National Forest without much trouble and no witnesses seeing us. Thank. God! My heart can stop trying to climb out of my throat now.

Okay. Now, this is where we are now. Watching, because we couldn't get any closer than the tree line without being seen.

The place was much more crowded than we thought it would be. Zetsu, whose green-and-black-and-white color scheme made him more or less blend into the snowy forest, snuck up as far as he dared. The fact that he could melt into the ground was a great help. He needed that ability now probably more than he ever had; the place was crawling with _the media. _

Reporters and cameramen and journalists and photographers were all over the place, mixing in with guys in biohazard suits and detectives and worn-out firefighters and what looked like volunteers piling the bodies out in the parking lot, and of course police officers trying to drive the paparazzi back beyond the line of the parking lot. It looked like some sort of holocaust had happened here. And hadn't it? This one was infinitely preferable to...the other one.

There was no single space where one of us nine could waltz through and not be seen by someone, not even human-looking Kakashi or Itachi, or petite me. There were even people walking on the roof of the lab who'd see us. The lab itself looked mostly as we left it: a broken and rotting building with cracked windows and smoke still piling out the windows, which was surprising, since it'd been slightly over a day since we'd started that smoke.

The media had a reason to still be hanging around there. An entire building just up and appeared in the middle of the woods, previously being invisible, which modern science currently thinks impossible to do, and then there's a hundred dead bodies inside, blood-smeared floors and walls and cells and rooms full of needles and samples of disease and radiation and even weaponry. I'd felt all of these things on my skin at least thrice.

There was a hand on my bare arm, and from the coolness of it, I guessed Neji or Sasori. The growl was indiscernible and I didn't try to guess at whose voice it was. My eyes were trained on the black man sitting on top of a fire truck, who hadn't moved at all since we'd come here. My raptor eyes focused in and out, trying to make out the words scrawled on his chest pocket through the snowy, rough wind that kept obscuring them. I kept staring and the male experiment who had a grip on my arm pulled me closer. I felt lean muscle in his body, which still left the choices as Sasori and Neji, the lankier fellows, and it was actually a bit comfortable there—

The man's tag: _Mustapha Mond, GAS_.

The second I recognized his name was the second I felt the needle in my arm and saw the blast of grey. I had felt that sort of needle in me before, felt that color blast, and knew I'd be falling to the ground soon. This was Charge 350, Chambers' own perfect tranquilizer. It could fell fully-grown elephants and put them into a coma, and for me, with my heart, my endurance, my blood, I would fall unconscious and be helpless in under a minute. I had no choice but to do what I did. With my presently-unnamed male companion still holding my arm and trailing me, I walked forward out of the protective trees and into Chambers' parking lot. On my way, I grasped the needle and crammed it into the pocket of my shorts.

"Hey! Hey!" I yelled as loud as possible, but was it? It sounded faint to me. Underwater, perhaps, but surely that was...was the drug. Yes. I could still see that most of the reporters and cameramen turned. They screamed and gasped and stared and everyone was looking at me and—I saw a whisk of brown hair—Neji.

"Don't shoot, please! Don't shoot!" I said that because Mustapha Mond up there on his fire truck was still aiming at me and he probably had comrades close by with similar arms. "We're not a danger to the people, I promise you! We won't hurt anyone! Chambers Incorporated _did _create us, and—"

I can't remember if I was able to say just how y diabolical Chambers Incorporated was.

666

Probably still January 17th. Probably still daytime. Being forcibly drugged makes any more accurate guesses pointless. I effing hate drugs. Anybody who uses them, go smack yourself. ...Sakura POV

666

White. White. White. White.

This room is far too white.

I looked around the reflective tiles, desperate for color, and keeping quiet. My old instinct for doing so was prominent in me. I tried to sit up and found that it hurt like some thousand flames and oh Jesus Christ make it stop!

By the time I fully sat up, I was almost in tears and my wings shook like frail, silver leaves. moved my eyes instead of my head and saw that surprisingly, I was not bound with any chains and a shock collar had not been put on me. I was basically free. 'Thank_ you, God, if you had anything to do with this.' _

And I was still wearing my tee and shorts, and it didn't appear I'd been biologically tampered with in my sleep. But one couldn't be sure of that.

The tranquilizing dart was still in my pocket. _'Good.' _

To my left, there was Neji, laying flat on his back, eyes closed and breathing deep. His black coat was open at the chest, revealing the loose sleeveless shirt below. It showed off the fact that he really was a lean boy and could stand to eat a good burger or two. Perhaps he hadn't eaten enough at the cousin's house after all. I looked around the rest of the bland, white room for something to eat...and isn't that stupid. I guess I'm still a little drugged up. I laughed at myself.

The sound brought a questioning growl-purr from my right, and there was Zetsu. His flytrap appendage was attached to his shoulders right then, ridiculously stretching the neckhole of his long coat. And that's kinda silly, 'cause wouldn't they make his clothes knowing the neckhole would be stretched epically like that? The flytrap has a bullet in it. And he has two red patches on his leg. He was staring at me.

Awake, conscious, so I asked in the guise of a statement, "So I attempted to show them we're not a threat and they tried to kill us anyway."

"_Some did," _and the black part of his mouth moved. _"It was the man on the fire truck, and others we didn't see. The mercenaries from the list. They shot us full of that damn drug, the only one that can make us sleep so quickly, the…uh…"_ Were it one of the cousins here with me, I might consider waiting so at to not let him feel like his memory is going and he needs my help. But I have no such reservations of kindness and patience for these fellas.

"Charge 350." I supplied him, and he nodded, now looking furious. _"They shot you full of it. Sixteen darts. Nine to Neji. I blocked nine more that would have hit you both." _

Zetsu had blocked Charge 350? With what, his bare hands? Couldn't be. Was he as precisely skilled as Neji, who could catch a bullet in his teeth? However he'd done it, he wasn't lying, that much I knew. I could see the other puncture holes in his clothes. And indeed, they were mostly on his arms and wrists.

"Thank you," I said, and I meant it. Zetsu gave me a smile so smooth and yet so brilliant I couldn't look away from it. Since when did he carry emotion within him? Since when could he smile like that?

"Deidara and Kakashi were going to come help you. The others had to hold them back, because you pointed, and made a hand motion," Zetsu raised his white hand and feebly, quite pathetically, tried to copy the hand motion I didn't remember making. It fell back onto the floor with a thud. Definitely still drugged. "telling them to stay away. They stayed away, and the man on the truck got down, and his friends came from somewhere…and they grabbed us and took us away. I talked to Neji a little while ago. He says he remembers us riding in a truck. With soldiers. Pointing guns at us."

He looked around slowly, like his neck was in pain and then turned back to me. "I don't recognize this room. I don't think it's part of the lab." One quick glance told me that the fear I'd woken up with was wrong. This white, white, windowless room was not part of the Chambers lab. For one, I'd seen or at least glimpsed every room in the building. Also, it's currently crumbling and filled with dead bodies and that is totally not the place any experienced assassin would stash a priceless mutant experiment. I told all this to Zetsu and he nodded.

"Yes...and I bet we're on the news right now. You, me and Neji. The reporters had time to film you and him clearly for a few seconds before the man started shooting."

And not enough time to say what I needed to say about Chambers. I had wanted to come out there spouting my peace messages. Truth. But we were shot down before I could speak a word in our defense. So I'd failed. I had wanted to verbally expose them, because even if they were hanged for genetic experimentation and fraud and embezzlement, the icing on the cake would be the fact that they'd been abusive to the experiments, too.

They had abused their genetic experiments, who were bought and created with money partially obtained by embezzlement and hidden with fraud, abused them with disease and inhuman physical labor and lack of sustenance and most everything a torture victim was subjected to. _That, _was something for which they needed to be burned and I know the public will soon do that to them.

"Do you think the footage of us three has gotten to news broadcasts all across the world yet? Or just in America?"

He was about to answer when a red light flashed above me, and I found myself looking into a black camera, which had been previously covered by a white panel. I saw a microphone on it, though, and the white panel probably hadn't been able to hide my conversation with Zetsu. Except—wait, yes—Zetsu and the other males didn't actually speak English, they spoke their growling, purring tongue—

"So how's life going, Sakura?" Karin's voice was unmistakable. "Conquered any new fucking obstacles today?"

She must have thought that was funny, because she erupted into such raucous laughter that the microphone that caught my voice and projected hers gave screeching feedback. Fifty nails on fifty chalkboards right there.

"What do you want now, Karin?" I adopted the tone of "My two-year-old child is being a brat again" to see where that got me. She picked up on this tone.

"I want you on your fucking _knees_, that's what I want!" The feedback from this screech made me wince and woke Neji from his sleep. Immediately he realized what was going on (I think?) and sat up, growling like the caracal he was and twitching his tail. His growls had little whimpers of agony mixed in, and I wondered for his sake and mine if the Charge 350 that hit us had been mixed with something else equally bad for our systems. A toxin or-

The feedback again. "Do you hear me, Sakura?" The noise hurt my ears but I stared defiantly at the camera. Her screaming wouldn't affect me now. "I want you begging to go back into your dog crate, I want you crying for the muscle cutters and surgeries without anesthesia and screaming for your shock collar again! I had a new one designed just for you, and it's even go your name on it, little pet."

No you don't. No, you don't. You don't have a new shock collar for me because good lord I would never truly live or breathe again if that thing touched me again. No.

Neji grasped something at his side and tossed it up at the camera. I realized it was a piece of tile he'd scraped off with his claw, and it thwacked against the wall near the camera with all the threat of a lion's roar. "Sakura is not your pet!" His growling was furious, enraged, menacing. "She's _our _pet. _Ours._"

Moving a muscle would have made me cry out right then. I wanted to badly to electrocute his ear, single it to a little ash mound—and I heard Karin talking again, sounding a little more sane. "So what did _this_ douchebag say?" she grumbled haughtily, and my theory from a few minutes ago was confirmed. Karin couldn't understand their talking! She heard me speaking perfect English to another creature who was doing nothing but making animal noises. This was perfect!

"You know what? Doesn't matter. I've got business. Soon I'm coming down there to put the shock collar on you, pet." Neji and Zetsu hissed together and bared their fangs. "Those two will be put in interlocked cells, right next to yours. They'll be close enough to watch when you get electrocuted again. I wanna see how many volts it takes to make you scream. Make you talk, beg, cry. Everything! The amount you and Kisame endured the day you escaped could be a good starting point. What was that? Ten thousand? Two? Fifty? What the hell. We'll try everything. I'll be on my way in a minute!"

We heard the sounds of her scuffling around, opening and closing drawers, humming to herself. Preparing. I was so glad I still had the needle with me. It was crucial now. It could save us, and if not that, ruin Karin one last time. I would ruin her before she could ruin Zetsu and Neji. I would burn her first if I had the chance, and now I did.

Fire, lava, plasma, everything hot in existence _raged _in my torso and arms and stomach and made my blood pound like a stampede of wild horses, but I leaned over to Zetsu anyway. It was a long lean, as he was still laying down, and I had to whisper in his ear. "She can't understand you when you talk. This could help." I gulped, getting picture after picture of what I was going to do, the exact reason I'd put the dart in my pocket in the first place. "She's not going to kill me unless I scream for her. And I won't. I promise."

Zetsu was not a feline at all. He was human and plant, so I didn't understand why he licked my cheek then and purred against it, pressing his head close as he could. It seemed so feline, but I let him do that for five or six seconds before leaving him. I let him we warm against me and that was okay right now.

I turned—his white hand grasped mine faster than I thought the drug's pain would allow, and I let it stay there while I repeated the same information into Neji's ear. It was a little easier, as he was sitting up and had four ears to hear my message instead of the typical human number of two. When I finished I took the dart out of my pocket. Neji saw the thin, steel tip as soon as Zetsu did, and I think they understood my plan. Neji's tail twined around my arm and pulled me closer so he could effectively whisper to me.

The movement, so quick, brought the furious lava-pain again and through the pounding—the slamming, the crashing—of my heartbeat I heard only a little of what he had to say. It may have been, "love you," but my hearing was horrid at that moment, so it may have been "left you," or "lose you," and "little one" may have been in there, too. It sounded like all of them to me and I didn't want to waste time figuring which one and retreating from my plan. Karin was coming.

I moved away from him slowly and his ears pulled back in what may have been fear or anger or anxiety or all three. I slid my hand out of theirs and stood up. It was grueling, sweaty work that took more willpower than strength. Twice I stopped to breathe deep and slow and cease my panting and press a hand the cramp in my side. Zetsu murmured something quietly to me, his black side, I think, the side that was usually cursing like Hidan and talking angrily. Neji's claws scraped against the tile. I could sense they both wished for the strength to get up and stop me. I kinda wished for the strength to stop me as well.

Then again, I wished they'd keep quiet, too. Here I was doing something that would help them, doing what they'd allegedly always wanted me to do, and they were crying and whining for me to stop. Ungrateful, effing bitches.

But now, now I was standing straight up in that plain and perfect white room, holding up the dart in my left hand. Please, please, let her still be able to see. "Karin!" I said loudly. There was no response so I spat out here name again. There was a shuffling, bopping sound that I assumed was here plopping back into a chair and leaning into the microphone and camera. I heard her stammer and stutter as she saw what I had. I inwardly wondered why this hadn't been taken from me while I'd been unconscious. Maybe they hadn't thought it would be a threat in comparison to me. Well, it was.

It wasn't hard for me to draw up a diagram of the human body in my head. Lungs, pancreas, Achilles tendon, everything else. The organs in particular, I could have traced with my bare fingers. And I certainly knew where my larynx was. The colloquially-named "voicebox". My steel-tipped dart, thin enough nearly to poke a hole in my eardrum, pointed right to it.

Everyone was watching, and I knew what they were thinking. They thought I was about to live my lifelong lie. Muteness would no longer be faked with a faulted voicebox. They saw a Sakura who would truly be mute.

With perfect precision and true confidence, I stuck the needle into my neck and punctured it.

666

First of all, I don't actually know if the larynx is close enough to one's skin to be stabbed without stabbing any other body parts, too. I have yet to take an anatomy class and my knowledge of it only extends to quaint trivia that Dr. House gave me. So I don't know if Sakura's deed is actually possible. Please do not try to find out for yourself.

And for those of you who have read my one-shot Liar, you may recall that I began the story with an AN stating that I really, really, wanted to use this one plot device and basically cooked up the story just to use that device. Well I never did in the end and the story turned out fine without it. That idea was Sakura stabbing herself straight in her voicebox, so that she'd be muted and unable to relay any information to her captors. Which it seems Sakura has just done in Airborne.

Secondly, _dang _that took some time. A lot of work! But I'm done now and thankfully it's not past one in the morning so I can head off to sleep without fretting that I've lost any of it.

Ta…Storm


	22. Twentysecond

**EDIT, December 2011: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful college student with friends and an actual life, (though fanfiction still triumphs) and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through to meet the bar of her current writing skills...and then update the story. YAY.

This chapter was brought to you indirectly by my beloved big brother :D I came home from school one day to find an enormous package on our doorstep, a thirty-two-inch television, which had to be meant for one of our neighbors because we definitely hadn't ordered such a thing. My brother called me later to say that, yes, the TV was meant for us and it was our early Christmas gift. And of course, he wouldn't really admit it, but for his impending Christmas visit, he would naturally prefer playing 360 games with me on a flat-screen, thirty-two-inch monitor than my smallish, convex, nineties TV in my room.

But what are silly life events like this in comparison to Airborne! D:

666

Sometime on January 17th, but that doesn't matter too much right now, does it? It's Failure Day every day ...Sakura POV

666

In the time it took me to pull that needle out of my neck, in one slim second, I had some sort of waking dream. Some kind of inner fear taking hold of me.

I was looking through someone's eyes. Maybe they were my eyes, maybe I had turned into somebody else, it didn't matter. Through those eyes and ears I was told by a young nurse that because I had refused to be an organ donor I was going to have my organs and all other usable parts forcibly taken from me, and yes, it was a legal process.

Next thing I knew, I was strapped to a table, calmly telling the nurse that I hated her and all nearby the surgeons dressed in sunny yellow scrubs. The nurse said it was natural to hate them. That she would so coolly deflect my hate made me...should have made me enraged, but she gave me some kind of shot that dulled all my senses, all my feelings. I felt an annoying pressure on my foot where they must have made the first incision. I could no longer move my head, so I merely kept my eyes on the nurse, trying to talk, because I felt a kind of desperate fear that the anesthesia couldn't numb, and I needed to hear something besides the sound of cutting flesh.

I told the nurse of a childhood that wasn't mine. A best friend in grade school who had to move to Portugal. Another friend who played video games with me, and spent three nights at my house when my uncle died in Iraq. I talked about a trombone I had learned to play in sixth grade and next week I was supposed to play it at a regional competition. She nodded and nodded and nodded. And then the surgeons unhooked the lower half of the table and moved it out of the way, because there was nothing left to rest on it.

Then suddenly the nurse told me I couldn't talk, so they must have taken my jaw. She asked me "yes-or-no" questions and had me blink once or twice to respond. Then she told me I had to stop blinking and the fear I had tried to keep back so badly flooded me and I started to shiver…or did I? How could I? I had so few nerves left at this time that I couldn't possibly shiver. I wouldn't feel myself doing it even if I could.

I wanted to disappear, I wanted to cry, _so badly, _but I had no eyes or eyelids or tear ducts so I couldn't.

My lungs, my legs, my heart! This was an entirely new kind of fear. On top of everything else spinning and burning and falling apart, I couldn't even depend on having all of _me. _

This is how I felt when the needle came completely out of my body and the waking dream faded. The pain was something I could deal with, something I had always dealt with, but the fear was something else. The situation had never been so drastic that I had to destroy part of my own body to spite Chambers. I had injured myself, but always knowing my natural strength would heal me. Had I ever destroyed something within me just for the purpose of spitting in their faces? How much of me would be left when all of this was finally over? Was it worth it? I thought so, underneath the fear that I was desperately trying to mask.

I think I succeeded, because when I stared up at the camera and felt a little line of blood trickle down my neck and stain my tee, Karin knew her plan of making me cry out and beg was ruined. And I knew it because she started screaming.

It was profanity coming from that microphone. It was cursing, swearing, hating, some of it so loud and charged with fury it came out as nothing but screeching, gibberish feedback on the microphone. Noise, noise, noise. I saw the little device twitching at the great volume going through it, volume the mechanism wasn't designed to handle. I don't think I'd ever heard Karin so loud, and in truth it scared me.

But still, I could stand it. The fear of her voice, the dream-fear of losing literal pieces of myself, made some strange blend of emotion with some...really wonderful, even mischievous satisfaction. I mean...How many times in my life had I pissed off Karin and been there to see it, to feel the pleasure of it? Twice now. I went back to the boys with a smug little smile and a tiny stripe of blood on my shirt.

I sat down in between them again. Flytrap-less Zetsu, who was sitting up now, suddenly grabbed my shoulder and I grabbed his, charging up my hands, ready to hurt him. And all he did was pull his arm around, and the other one, right over my wings, oppressive, pulling me down shit shit shit now we're hugging. He's flat on his back and I'm on his chest and geez this should totally not be happening this is weird I mean for God's sake Karin _is watching_!

He must have known. Neji, too. But no. Keep hugging Sakura, that's just fine you freaking pest. He held me to him so that my feathers dragged a little on the floor and I tried hard to focus on the feel of that floor instead of Zetsu's heartbeat in my ear. And that was difficult in itself. His heartbeat was intriguing. I wanted to...to study it, maybe? Keep listening? It was such a unique sound, two beats in one, one a fraction of a second after the other one. I wanted to listen to it, but to do that I'd have to press my head closer to his chest and—and—I was too much of a coward to do that.

Hey, now, that's a good one. "Sakura's a coward," pfff. Maybe that's not the right way of putting it. "Sakura is powerful and clever and daring and very, very awesome and stuff but she has a small set of fears, a few of which are ridiculous, like hugging a person who looks like they were halfway dipped in bodypaint or listening to double-heartbeats. And yes, yes, it made my heart jump around in horror when he did something so simple as adjusting his arms around me. Why can't he just stay still? Settle down! For God's sake, stay still and stop fidgeting, are you three years old! But he's staying still now and that's not any better and now I have to think of anything, anything at all to not acknowledge or feel Zetsu's _embrace _on me. (How many seconds has it been since he grabbed me? Three?)

"What the hell was that?" he snarled.

'_Hindenburg crashing due to an alleged hydrogen explosion, which makes modern hydrogen-powered cars out of the question. One leak or dent in the tank, one rear-ending accident, car would go up in flames. New subject: Cations smaller or bigger than their parent atoms? Smaller! Lose an electron, valence shell is empty, disappears. One less orbital, one less layer. Get smaller, of course. Opposite for anions! Oh, Kirk Douglas was at the Academy Awards last year! What won Best Picture? Hidan said it was-'_

"There's no point in even asking. She can't talk anymore." Neji's voice cracked. "She really can't talk anymore…"

He looked so devastated. Like he'd predicted the end of the world. Like my not being able to talk truly crushed him. Maybe it was that face, that believable lie in his voice, that prompted me to do what I did next. I dipped my head lower, a little hidden behind my shoulder and wing, and Zetsu's arm. The camera couldn't see my face now. And I murmured, "I can talk."

I couldn't see the looks they gave me, with Zetsu holding me as close as he was. But then he moved me away, holding me by the shoulders, and the opposite halves of his face showed the same expression of incredulous wonderment. I held up the needle for them to see, and when Neji saw it, he pulled my hand closer to gaze at the tip of the dart's needle.

He saw the tip of the needle, the tip that was now jagged because the very end was missing, because that snip of metal was stuck in the tissue of my larynx.

"But only whispering. I didn't think I'd be able to talk at a normal volume and I can't." I added. "And even the whispering makes me feel a little strain right here." I pointed to a spot just to the left of my puncture wound. The way they stared, so wide-eyed, so awed, so horrified, was a sort of expression I couldn't remember ever seeing before, not even when I'd flown free of Chambers. I went back to a thought from a minute ago and my eyes hardened.

"You think I would really make myself mute just to spite Karin?" The growl of my own voice hurt a little. "Maybe if I somehow knew it would behead all of Chambers. But not just for Karin, never. But this damage is temporary. It can be fixed somehow, if my body doesn't push it out on its own."

Neji's tail went around my wrist and squeezed. It made me think of a mouse. Or a cat. Or another small, helpless animal, it didn't matter what animal, because it was being strangled by a grinning snake. God, I'm paranoid. Neji said, "How can it be done? Will you need to push the needle in again…and…and pull out the bit that's stuck there?"

Yeah, like how if you get shrapnel stuck in you, you use another piece of shrapnel to drag it out, that's how it's done. I just told him, "I might not need the needle." I murmured. "My body could dissolve the bit on its own, or shove it out as it would for a splinter." Here I had to pause, because...dammit... "Then again, these needles were designed for us and not any other creatures. I don't know what metals they're made of. What…_anythings _they're made of. There could be toxic chemicals in it. Or some substance that makes it impossible to be dissolve to ejected."

I swallowed experimentally...and was right. With the small, soft pressure of my contracting throat, I could feel the bit of metal pressing against a place it should not be. It had only been in there a minute. But it was definitely still there. "It may give me some kind of poisoning. Destroy my larynx for real."

"Then _why_ did you—"

"Because I know there's a chance it can be fixed, a very good one!" I said it more forcefully than needed. "And…I was thinking of Kabuto, too, honestly. If he's brought to court about all this, he'll be convicted for sure. And if not, I can still find him in time. We could possibly…force him to surgically take it out of me, if I can't myself. I know he's capable."

They obviously saw the reasoning. And apparently no flaws, either. That was good. I needed to be able to create as many flawless plans as possible. My judgment nowadays meant a lot to these creatures, and one slipup could make them angry. But then, of course, dream of flawlessness shattered. Satisfaction run over on the highway and eaten by crows.

"You would put trust in Kabuto?" Zetsu's white half whispered. I blinked at him, a little confused.

"Yes," I said. "O-Only because he has the ability to do it, and if it did happen to go that way, there'd more than likely be guards in the surgery room. And other surgeons to make sure he didn't purposefully do something wrong." But then I saw where their thought process was going. All of them, White Zetsu, Black Zetsu and Neji, all thought the same thing. And even to me it was appallingly wrong.

"You think I trust _Kabuto _more than you?" His name spat forth from my mouth. Their expressions said more than their words could and before they could say anything else I made what must have been a short but sweet victory speech for them.

"No. Hell no. You may or may not be demons, but whatever you are, you're not…you're better than…_Chambers._"

And boy did that get them started. Neji was suddenly as smiley and happy as Naruto with a soccer ball. Zetsu's face was maybe ten percent less ecstatic. I could feel his fingers curling on my body, each one its own tiny little hug. But they looked more or less the same: adoring and joyful. We may be stuck in some unknown place with Karin coming towards us and the public outlook on us could be a witch hunt and we don't know where the others are, but you'd never guess any of that by looking at these two. And that was too unfamiliar to me. Their false love wasn't something I needed and certainly not something I knew how to handle. So I drew up an excuse then and there and I hoped to god it didn't sound too pathetic. "That's enough talking for me. I should stay silent for a while. Even if Karin saw me jabbering and tries to pick more out of me I need to rest my voice."

But I knew that wasn't true. I knew the second Karin had stopped screeching into her microphone from whatever room she was in, she had run out of it. The silence from that microphone was proof enough. She was on her way in here, maybe with her mercenary friends, right now.

Somehow it didn't seem too silent in that perfectly white room after that. Their breathing was enough and if I listened, I could hear Zetsu's double-heartbeat. A little time passed and Neji leaned closer and licked me on my neck and cheek—licked me, just like he had in the Chambers lab the day before!—and I tried not to make too much noise. I just let him do it. Maybe that was a bad idea, because whenever I made a little...a little whimper kind of noise—it was hard to be totally silent, sometimes it tickled or just felt…weird—he smiled and licked again, harder, slower. And Zetsu just watched and let him do it. So suddenly we're a little family of cats. ...How sweet.

He scooted closer and kept at it, touching his lips to my cheek now. Now he's kissing. He's _kissing. _

Kissing and now combing my hair with his claws. And I could hear Zetsu laughing a little. Is this a dream? Is that why I'm feeling _safe _suddenly?

How is it that I'm the one feeling safe? Shouldn't they get that from the decisions and actions that come from me? Isn't this in reverse right now? I should not be the "pet", like Neji said. The male experiments are my pets, if anything, effing dangerous Dobermans but they usually do what I say and act sweet on the side. And I hold their leashes. I make decisions, I lead, I have the judgments and opinions that matter. Sakura, me, just me.

Why is that? Why? I'm the youngest. I'm eight years old. Why do I have to take my worst fears by the hand and lead them around like Mother Goose?

This wasn't fair. Whether they follow me or obey me or hold me or kiss me, I'm still the leader. And if I screw up, they would blame me. They would blame me because they think I have the brainpower and the strength to get them through the storm, because I'm such a perfect little creation and I'm not! They would rip my wings off if I led them astray, if I got one of them killed. They would…they would…I didn't want to put words to the pictures I saw in my head, to put words to that bloody torture, that ripping of limbs and the consumption of flesh that I was seeing. I didn't deserve that. Few people on this earth really deserve that. .

And just like that, with one minute of thought and one minute of a caracal's kiss I could feel the weight that was truly on my shoulders with the trust of these half-human men. I felt the weight that I hadn't felt before because my fear of them had blocked almost everything else. Now the consequences were swirling in my head, the things that would fall if I wasn't perfect: the death, the pain, the ruin—

This wasn't _fair. _

666

January 17th, 1:40:33 PM, which means one-forty in the afternoon and thirty-three seconds, so says the hospital clock. …Kankurou POV

666

I fucking hate sitcoms. I hate them.

I really hate…a lot of television shows. Anything that shows the sickeningly cliché "not your average family!" bit. A cartoon of a boy who's a secret agent by night and a middle schooler by day, a sitcom about a rich family with a schizophrenic uncle and a germophobe mother and twin siblings who go to a "poor kids" school. All these shows suggest the main characters are different than the average family. (FYI, there's no _such fucking thing as an average family_) They completely mocked those of us who didn't have "normal" lives, people whose images, whose lives are too ugly for the screen. People who are slaves to their jobs, people who have no jobs or are desperately reaching for one. A person who lives alone because their entire family is dead. A couple whose baby died.

Children with no mother, and a father who throws beer bottles at them.

Threw beer bottles. Threw them, past tense. Dad's dead and whatever funeral service they had for him is over. I only know, I was only informed, 'cause the graveyard workers who had to shove dirt over him. Did they get a coffin for him? Who paid for it? Social Security or the hospital or what? Don't know. Don't care. While I sat, orphaned with broken legs and waiting for my brother to come out of his coma, some lucky bastard kid is sitting at home, watching TV afterschool, with a dependable income and loving family and _ignorant of how good he's got it. _I wish I could find a normal person with a normal life and suck their happiness out of them because I want some. I really want some, and I hate sitcoms.

This filled my mind when Temari suddenly came into my hospital room, and evaporated when she stopped by my bed. She came in wearing the same jeans she'd worn during the crash, but she had a new, purple shirt from some charity or generous person or something. Even she didn't know where it came from. She still had her bracelet with the tiny green skull on it and an implacable frown, the same quad-pigtail hairstyle and also a bottle of Coke in her hand. She looked like herself, like nothing was wrong, and I smiled at that. Then again, that couldn't be true. There were problems here. She turned around to close the door.

"Turn off the TV and listen, okay! I came here to tell you stuff." Her face told me "stuff" wasn't anything I wanted to hear. My legs suddenly started hurting. "The doctors are rehearsing it now 'cause they're afraid if they don't say it calmly enough they'll traumatize a poor child. I'm telling it to you 'cause _I _should. 'Cause the doctors aren't your sister."

"Gaara's dead?"

"No."

Oh, thank God, thank you _God. _If You had anything to do with this and even if you didn't. My heart suddenly felt a hundred times lighter. Whatever she said now couldn't hurt—wait—

"He's gonna die?"

"Maybe."

Instinctively I shoved the covers of my bed away and swung my feet over the bed—and I remembered both my legs were broken and it hurt _like hell _and I just about bit my tongue off trying not to scream. Temari shoved me back onto the bed and I sat there, catching my breath and waiting for the pain to stop. She gave me her soda and I took two grateful gulps. It was cold and really, really good, and I took one more extra gulp before shoving it back into her face. She took it quickly and neatly like a waiter at a fancy restaurant.

"It's his potassium level. It spiked. They don't really know why."

His Potassium? What? "Potassium is…in bananas?" Geez, I sounded like such a dumbass. And a total douche, too. I'd sounded like I didn't care. But Temari already knew the art of fancy, expressive sentences wasn't my forte. I guess sometimes when I talk, I just can't quite transfer thought to word, so I dish out a bunch of single-syllable bullcrap, and I always sounded…stupid. A lot stupider than I really am. And yet I'm ten times better off than Gaara ever was.

To my douchebag comment, Temari nodded and said. "Yah. It's a super-delicate thing. Too much of it or too little of it will kill you."

"So he's in danger of dying 'cause it's too high or too low?" I set my legs super-carefully on the ground with Temari's help. I was sitting up in bed, grasping the sheet in one fist and nothing in the other. The one with nothing must have been getting some scars from my nails.

"Too high. I said it spiked, remember? They've been getting him on camera, so they know nobody just injected him with some like on TV or something. They've got some evidence that the cells a lot of potassium in them are just randomly dividing, all by themselves, faster than they should."

Jesus_ fuck._ "That's cancer."

"…Too much potassium can kill you." Avoiding the subject. She doesn't know.

"Cancer."

She just kept not answering! "Pure potassium is what they use to put down dogs. A straight shot of it gives them a heart attack and they die."

"Does he have cancer, Temari?"

"I dunno. They dunno yet."

My heart which had been stupidly light was now realistically dark again, the same it had always been. It turned heavier every second as I weighed a new thought on my mind: "We can't pay for that. We can't pay to eat at McDonald's. We can't pay for it if they have to give him chemo. If they have to give him anything. They'll make us work it off, won't they?"

"Don't be stupid. Someone else will."

"Who?"

"If you'd stop giving one-word comments," I don't think she knew how much that hurt, "I'll tell you! It's the guy who wants to adopt us, who'll pay. All of us, together. His name's Hiashi Hyuuga, he's got a daughter 'bout your age, maybe Gaara's. She's super-shy. Sometimes he takes her to therapy for it, she's so damn quiet. I think she'd be a good…adoptive sister for Gaara."

That took balls to say. To offer up her baby brother for some shy stranger to make nice with. Only Temari could.

But even after that, my tough, generous sister said, "Hiashi says we could go to school," and it was the last word that really did it for me. The last time I'd been in school, I'd been a third-grader for four weeks somewhere near Miami, with my elder sister and little brother a year ahead and a year behind me. I remembered playing at recess, and my class had the same recess time as Gaara's second-grade class, and we played catch together. He told me he'd learned how to spell "river." And the next day, Dad was suddenly overdue for some borrowed money and we had to leave. All of us, on a motorcycle that he stole. Temari had been in the sidecart, and she almost fell out. I asked for Dad to slow down for her and he said no. He said let her go.

I remember it perfectly. He said, "Then just let her go." That fucking _psycho. _He would have let his child fall off a motorcycle and be left there. How dare he even walk on this earth. This place wasn't made for rotten pieces of shit like him! I'm so fucking glad he's _gone! _

He wasn't a part of us. He wasn't a part of anything. He didn't care what we learned in school, so we all told each other what we learned and were surprised and impressed at each other in our dad's stead. We exchanged lessons. Except for Gaara, who just...you know, gave verbal cliffnotes. But I was happy to tell them what I'd learned. I had really liked learning things. School was kind of a dream for me. So fantastic and far away. I'd even gotten the start of my puppetry hobby there, right there in third grade at Leawood Elementary. (My teacher used to be a ventriloquist.) But still...school. Here and now, we could go to school. It would be a dream come true for me. Not even my siblings knew how much I wanted to go to school.

But of course I also felt some recognition in this news. _Hiashi. _The officer who saw the winged man, who believed my story about the cat-man in the hospital courtyard, who really knew what trouble we were (possibly) in. It couldn't have been better if Mother Teresa had taken us in. That's crazy lucky. "We should go visit Gaara." I said.

"Yeah." she agreed.

"Do you think he has cancer?" I asked quietly, since a pair of nurses were walking by in the hallway. We passed another two hallways before she answered and I thought she'd forgotten my question. By the time she answered, I almost had myself. "Yeah, I think so." She said flatly. "Not that I know shit."

666

I want to say January 17th, I want to say late evening, but I have no idea. …Zetsu POV (AN: "Black Zetsu's" thoughts are in italics.)

666

Something about the way she just let Neji near her, let him do what he wanted, calmed me. I felt all right despite the situation. Despite that Karin had us locked in a seamless white room, had us all still so drugged only one of our group of three had the power to stand, and even she had limits (endless though they always seem), and the rest of our friends could be dead...or exposed to the public by now.

I think that last bit was the plan anyway, but—_Yes, fucking moron, it was the plan. Got a brain in there? Turn it on!_—rhhh...the other voice, I must ignore it...ignore it. Yes. Yes, showing ourselves to the public had been part of the plan. Sakura said it was better to expose ourselves to the public as we are, than they receive secondhand evidence about us from another source. That source could say we're cannibals _and we're rabid and we need lobotomies. _

And it hurt my mind to think of all those troubles, and of course I'm probably forgetting a few—_you are, sorry to say—_and sitting next to me is the one who remembers all of them with regretful clarity and works to solve them all.

Seeing Neji be so close to her her must mean she feels calm and safe enough to...well, to feel calm and safe. How to say it? She is finally allowing him near. We've spent eight years trying to touch her, even once, and here we are. I'm holding her. I can be happy, and relax. Relax despite the thought that Karin is coming, of all people on earth, and she could be doing or thinking or carrying absolutely anything.

Neji's purring again. I guess since he's a feline, he does that more than most of us. Sometimes even when he's not at all happy. And when he is, it's all the louder. And me? O_f course. And I felt like falling over and sleeping right then, 'cause I had two of my most trusted comrades in the goddamned world sitting next to me. The rest were…whatever. Wherever they are, they know how to act and what not to do. Kakashi will make it happen, like he always has, and if he makes a mistake, Sakura will pull him up and force it all to work._ And I rested my head on her shoulder and she let me, and I almost started to sleep.

I was half-dreaming that a perfect world was just like this: a little bubble with almost nothing in it but peace and a couple great companions. What else did you need? _Computers? Candy? Makeup? Television? Fuck you! This is PERFECT and none of your vanity will screw it up for me, petulant _wretch!

"Wretch" was too much, actually. Oops. I can't assume all of you are petulant little wretches. _Or are you? _And it didn't matter now, because I heard the door opening. My one minute of sleep was done because Karin and her unknown comrades had finally come down. The door in front of us was hardly moving and yet it made a horrific scraping sound like fifty nails on fifty chalkboards. I held Sakura tighter, pressed my hands into the smoothness and feather masses of her wings, and waited. They would pull her from my arms and I would bite their _fucking _hands off before Karin could lay a hand on her. I don't care if she squirmed and didn't like it and still hated me, I would keep her close even if I had to die.

Beside me, Neji's tail fell flat on the floor in shock. The door was open.

_Kisame _had opened the door.

Kisame! Really! The remains of the drugs in my system prevented me from being too terribly surprised and I hated that. Nothing good ever came from such things, not the substances on the street and not the substances in laboratories, fuck all of it, fuck those who have it, it's ruining this perfect moment: Kisame's found us! He was just standing there before us, wearing a blue winter jacket that actually fit his size—good for him, sometimes even the clothes the scientists gave him were too small—and staring at us with just the same amount of surprise. He backed up a step and shouted into the hall, "Here! They're all in this one!" And I heard footsteps. The light, hasty ones were Naruto's, and I heard two other sets as well. Whose? Whose?

Out of nowhere the blue bulk of Kisame was shoved out of the door and Naruto replaced him. He still had that orange-and-black coat he stole from Hidan and Kakuzu's house. _Was everyone getting attractive clothes now? Fucking God. _The orange-gold, canine ears on his head shot straight up.

"Oh my freakin' God! You're okay!" He bounded into the room and landed hard on his knees. By the time he skidded to a stop, Sakura had been dragged into his arms with an outcry of obvious dislike and Neji was yowling at how hard Naruto's tail was pulling on his. The fox-kit immediately nuzzled himself all over Sakura and with her wings wilting in shock her face was a melting pot of confusion and ten other things. It was an adorable sight.

When he licked her cheek and found the faint dampness that Neji had left he sent said caracal a look I couldn't see and then returned to leave bold marks of his own tongue.

By the time Itachi and Sasori appeared in the doorway, still in theirs Chambers cloaks, the latter moving to the side a little to help Kisame back up, Naruto had taken Sakura completely out of my hands and had made her fall flat onto her back. He was muttering joyful nonsense in her ear and she was still and wide-eyed and I stared at Naruto as he finally lived his dream.

He moved back after a long time, and held her shoulders in his hands, saying, "You went missing again. And we thought they killed you guys." He sounded close to tears. "It's crazy out there. You're not gonna believe what happened."

"How long's it been…s-since they shot us?" Sakura's stammered. Understandable with how Naruto had smothered her.

"A week." Itachi supplied from the doorway.

"A _week!_"

Sakura coughed once and my entire body froze. She'd said she had to be quiet for now but she wasn't. She only grabbed Naruto's arms and used them to levy herself up to a standing position and kept talking. "What, what, how did we—it shouldn't even have been three days!" Her eyes focused on the wall for a moment, seeing something none of us did. "Did you see how many darts we took? Zetsu claims sixteen for me and nine for him and Neji. That dosage couldn't-"

"Sixteen and nine?" Sasori interrupted her flurry of words. "No. More like thirty and twenty. I didn't actually count them."

The effects of all that Charge 350 in my body may have been fading. Maybe I just realized a cold truth. Whatever it was, I think I understood what they were about to say. "Someone's been talking about us. _Publicly. Saying negative things._" Itachi actually swallowed before nodding in his usual wordless way.

Neji decided to make himself noticed then. "This isn't the lab, is it?" he whispered, sounding afraid of the answer.

Itachi and Sasori glanced at each other but appeared to find no answer in each other's eyes. "We should be in the country again. We may have to turn south, though." Sasori muttered.

Turn south?

"This is a plane." Sakura deadpanned. Fuck hiding my surprise, I showed every bit of it and so did she.

"Sure is," Naruto's eyes were laughing, but he wasn't. "When the gun dudes shot you, you…did this thing…" Naruto hilariously tried to mimic the gesture Sakura had made that day, "for us to stay back and we did…but after you fell, Karin came out of the fire truck." Someone's claws scraped the metal doorway. Maybe Kisame. "She said she was—" Naruto's hands went tighter on Sakura's skinny arms. He was trying to control himself. Trying not to hit something.

"She said she was an employee at that lab secretly reporting the corporation's crimes to the FBI. And she'd wanted to stop their lawbreaking for years but she was, was gathering up evidence and gaining the trust of her co-workers! And now she could finally reveal all the _heinous and cruel crimes of Chambers Incorporated._" The last part was a quote, and at the last word, his fist slammed into the floor and dented it.

"They believed her." Sasori said. Perhaps he was masking fury. "And some of the reporters helped carry you three into another truck. Kakashi chose to leave and we followed. We found our way back to the house. We saw the news again. All day, every minute, they showed our pictures and called us monsters...and made us like wanted serial killers." His eye twitched. A loss of control for him. "The President was on the news later that day. He said he'd deal with us. And his approval rating went _up._"

"Stop making it sound horrible." Kisame snapped. "Goddammit, never mind. That part is horrible. But the next part rocks."

At this point Sakura had grasped Neji's hand and was dragging him onto his feet with unnecessary force. He grunted and moaned and put an arm around both Naruto and Sakura to steady himself. Naruto was the one who helped me stand, but I needed no extra support after that (I'm kind of disappointed to admit). "Allright…" she muttered. "What rocks?"

Kisame's face twisted into a grin, the happiest grin any shark on earth could have. "Okay. Y'all ready for this?" The grin got wider and his body shook with quiet, secret laughter. _His face is gonna break from all that smiling! What the hell's he gonna say?_

"A couple days after you guys were taken and Karin lied, _I _went back into Portland, 'cause there was a guy robbing a bank—seriously—and I just walked right past the police officers and that 'do-not-cross' line, went into that bank and took a bullet." He unbuttoned the first two buttons of his coat and revealed a little black dot, below his collarbone. The bullet hadn't been removed! "The guy got scared out of his fucking mind and ran screamin' out the back door, but he was damn slow. I got him. Beat his teeth in and left him in the bathroom. And I got the hostages and walked them out the door, a man with a beard and a pregnant lady. The man ran away soon as he was out the door, but I was carrying the woman."

Of course, the one of our pack who looked the least like a human had to be the most gentlemanly. "I carried her down the steps. All the people were staring at me, felt like all the people in the city, and nobody said anything. I let her down right next to a police officer, asked her if she was okay. I don't think she understood me. I don't think anyone did. But…" He paused. His ridiculous grin faded into calm and proud confidence.

"I reached out my hand and she shook it and said thank you. Started crying. And people started taking pictures." He turned his head away and snickered, "Taking pictures with their cell phones! It was hilarious! This one black guy actually asked me if I was the Loch Ness Monster!" He burst out laughing. "Ah, but, then I ran off, 'cause I thought no regular person would understand my talk if the scientists couldn't, so I didn't bother. I left while everyone was still thinking I was good."

I was still drugged, but I knew my face showed the best non-verbal WTF-expression in the world. "_And why the hell did you do all of that?"_ I snarled without meaning to.

Kisame grinned still. "Well, we uh…" The grin faded. Finally. "We agreed we had to make a good public image somehow, and that was a good opportunity. One of the reporters who was at the lab was talking about that bank robbery on the phone with somebody, but she stayed at the lab since that's more important, I guess. But I went to the bank. And I stopped that guy and saved those people and it looked really good. We thought that trying to rescue you wouldn't be good because...because it'd scare people. And breaking open the truck to save you would look…savage. The last thing we wanted to look. Yeah?"

Maybe unwittingly, maybe not, the last word of Kisame's story told a huge truth. The way he said "yeah" and kept his eyes locked on Sakura, the tone of voice…it was obvious. In her absence, our friends had done what they thought Sakura would do, what was most logical and what was best for everyone. And now Kisame wanted to know if it would have been her course of action after all.

My eyes were all for Sakura, all for gauging her reaction. With her emotional eyes, it wouldn't be too difficult. But I hadn't even finished turning my head when she said, "That's…absolutely brilliant. Leaving when they couldn't say a word against you! I'd clap if I wasn't still drugged." _Well, there you go. It was right after all! _

"I know this sounds like a rude change of subject but we need to be out of this room _now. _Karin's coming and if there's anything in the world that we need to do right now, it's—"

"Karin's not here," Sasori said, cocking his head. "There are fifteen rooms on this plane and four hallways and Deidara must have finished the last one by now. If he'd found her, he would have brought her."

"Why would you think she's on this plane?" Itachi questioned, at last stepping into the room. He paused only three steps in and turned his head. His eyes fell on the microphone and the camera in the high corner, that Karin had used to see us, hear us and speak to us. "Demonic bitch. Did she tell you she was near here?" He didn't even wait for an answer. Itachi's all-seeing eyes didn't need one. "Mm. Did she mention any of her comrades? A group called GAS? Did she say anything useful at all?" Since Itachi in a foul mood can mean steel beams melting into magma, I was reluctant to tell him what Karin had told us, what her main goal was.

But her main goal and mine were polar opposites, and to protect mine I had decided years ago that even wading through molten metal would not stop me.

"She wants Sakura's scream." Itachi's eyes on me, furious and questioning, were too much. There was a cold, spiking headache growing in my skull. So I looked away. At the lock of dark hair hanging just beside his eye. "Sakura's escape ruined her. And she will drive herself insane if that's what it takes to to ruin Sakura." The little soft flick on my knee was definitely Neji's tail, giving me a quick touch to thank me for saying it in front of Itachi so that he did not have to.

Itachi's eyes drifted over to Sakura and softened instantly. He raised his hand and flicked one finger. "Come here." The command was a whisper. She pressed her lips into an irritated line at being called over like some dog. But she went to him, brave little one, and flinched only minutely when his large hand caught her small one.

"You stay near me. Karin is not aboard this plane, but anything else could be. You will be safer with me than with them." By 'them', he meant Neji and I, and he spoke truth and not criticism, so I nodded agreement.

Her brow rose anyway. "I will also be safer with everyone than with just you. There's no reason to stay near you specifically." I didn't know what she was doing, exactly. Was she saying she felt safer surrounded by all of us instead of being close to just Itachi? Or was she arguing simply for the sake of arguing? He opened his mouth but she spoke before him. "Zetsu and Neji already took darts for me. Darts that could have been just as harmful as bullets. And you would have done the exact same as them if you'd been out there with me then. So what's your reason now?"

She was facing away from me, so I didn't hesitate in smiling at the answer I already knew. Itachi, damn weasel, had the little one's safety in mind before all, and also merely wanted to be closer to her after seven days' deprivation.

So he made up for it by lightening his eyes, something he did only for her. "We waited for days in that house after Kisame's performance, thinking of a place to search for you. I don't know how Deidara caught your scent when he did or how he found such a small airport on the country's border. But I know I ripped open this plane's cargo hold for a reason."

"The same reason you're holding my hand?"

"Yes."

Her reaction to that, a sigh, didn't surprise me very much. But it certainly did when she took her free hand and tapped her knuckles on his forehead. _That was...pretty funny. _

"Because you think of me as your prey, and somewhere in this brain here, that constitutes to the fact that I need protection from you. But I think that's backwards now." Her eyes flickered over to Kisame. "You're the ones that need protecting. Getting shot with drugged darts, halting bank robberies! If I don't die of old age, I'm going to die trying to…" She trailed off and her hand slipped down a few inches, conveniently covering Itachi's crimson eyes. Almost. "Shit. I knew I'd forgotten something. Where are Kakashi and Deidara?"

"Flying the plane, of course."

"_What?_"

"The pilots are merely unconscious," Sasori informed from the doorway, "and autopilot will only work if you have coordinates. Currently, we're flying low and hoping highway signs will direct us back to Portland."

"That is not how you fly a plane, dumbshit!" Sakura and I said that at the exact same moment in time, and I was so dumbstruck I couldn't utter another word. She kept going: "You fly low enough to see highway signs and people actually driving there are gonna think we're about to crash! Where are they? Where are they? And are the pilots bound or gagged? The only reason they'd be aboard is to transport us and the only reason they'd want to do that at all would be if they're friends of Karin—" She couldn't stop listing problems.

Eventually Itachi took a step back and began leading out out the door. Neji and I tried not to laugh and followed. Till we landed, found out exactly how many people were supporting Karin and how many understood us, we'd actually enjoy laughing for a bit.

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January…uh…the 24th, apparently, the dashboard-thing said 3:33 PM last time I looked at it… …Sakura POV

666

WTF I just landed a plane

Deidara and Kakashi were in the cockpit when we got there and Deidara had a little walkie-talkie thing up to his mouth and into it he was spouting shit like "Breaker, roger" and stupid shit and Kakashi was humming "Jingle Bells" and shaking a packet of M&Ms in one hand and steering with the other and apparently they'd only been doing that for the past thirty seconds, as they'd heard my footsteps so they knew I was found and all right, and luckily we were within sight of a good landing spot, a flat and faraway strip of land that was only twenty-three miles outside of Portland, and they knew this because Deidara had read it on the plane's dashboard's "pedometer," which I knew was the wrong word for it but who gave a shit at that point so I let it go and stood there and shared M&Ms with Zetsu and Kakashi while they landed a plane. (That's what you call a run-on sentence, children!)

And let's not forget how I wigged out when Kakashi's hand slipped and almost landed us _sideways_ and I had to take control of his wheel and Deidara's and finish the landing all on my own. I ran over some trees at the end, speeding along the vacant strip and feeling like I was about to lose a life in a video game as they got closer closer closer oh my God closer BAMMM. Trees dead. Us okay.

In something that looked like a glove box Kakashi had found the lunchbox of one of the two pilots and everything in it was offered to Neji, Zetsu and me. Neji said he wanted the water bottle much more than the turkey sandwich or the thermos of cold chicken soup. Zetsu wanted the sandwich. I wanted everything and an extra two meals but settled for the soup. I remembered having some just like it at the cousins' place and the memory alone almost made it taste warm and soothed my wounded throat. Everyone else decided to split the meager contents of the second lunchbox.

After hanging around in the cockpit for ten minutes and lunching, we exited the plane and strode into the woods which were literally two feet from the door. We left no footprints, wiped our fingerprints from the cockpit, and traveled in the trees and chose a comfortable evergreen to chill out in. We needed a new plan, Itachi insisted and everyone agreed. We needed a way to stay together. Nobody was to go missing a third time and much as I inwardly hated it and ground my teeth at it, I knew that was right.

He stayed way too close to me, his coat brushing my wing's feathers sometimes and I made subtle efforts to move away. His efforts to stay near were five percent less subtle. I was shivering the entire trip to find that one evergreen. It was still the dead of winter and we were way north in comparison to most of the country, and though it wasn't snowing, there was still some on the ground and around my feet with every step, but none of that was making me shiver. Recall that I'm really good in the cold, I could sleep here if I needed and feel only one notch of discomfort. Snow and a short-sleeve outfit was not what made me shiver now.

"What's wrong with the original idea?" Naruto said, swinging a leg on his branch beside me. "The one where we just go to the police station and tell them "we come in peace" and stuff?"

"Nothing's wrong with it." I said, my throat throbbing just a little. "But what Karin did might ruin it. Sasori told me he went on Kakuzu's computer a few days back and all he found on the internet were conflicting reports about us. Us and Kisame. If too many people agree we're dangerous, going to the police station could—"

"Just get us shot again. All of us." Kakashi moaned. He pulled his scarf higher up on his face to hide from the cold. It almost covered his bottom layer of eyelashes.

"And there'll be more than simple highway patrol cops at any police station now..." Sakura muttered with her face in her hand.

"I thought, at Buffalo Jump someone said the idea would be to destroy all the labs around the world." Deidara said tentatively.

"I also said that that would be done more easily if our existence was kept secret." Itachi told him, staring forwards seemingly at nothing. I didn't really want to meet his eyes to follow to his point of focus. "We were incredibly lucky to find that plane when and where we did. You saved everyone, Deidara." He paused so that Deidara could have that moment for himself. He was the hero. Whoop whoop. "It was and will be the only one where armed guards won't be watching for us."

"Can't sneak the most 'human' of us into an airport, can we?" Naruto asked.

"We couldn't even do that before," Sasori snapped with more force than he should have for such a simple and innocent question. "Airports require passports and ID cards and all sorts of information we don't have. If Kakashi attempted it, they'd accuse him of terrorism before anything else." At this, Kisame sniggered so hard he had to cover his mouth, and I almost had that reaction, too, thinking of Kakashi pointing all his fingers and steel-like claws at a crowd of people in an airport: "Don't anybody move! I've got crazy hair and one-inch nails!" They probably weren't even that, but that doesn't even matter in a joke, so before I knew it, in my head the three-inch nails warped into nine-inch ones, as they reminded me of a CD I'd seen in Kakuzu's room.

Itachi came down from a higher tree branch and onto my own. He was on one knee, breeze blowing his dark hair back slightly and his eyes gazing forward with all the dangerous intent of a sniper rifle. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a green thing appearing and knew it must be Zetsu's flytrap-thing, forming on his body again where it had been absent for days. I could almost see his already-wide shirt collar stretching to accommodate it. At last I saw what had silenced them all: a grey blur, moving through the woods in our direction. It was four-legged, larger than a horse, heaving its breath so loudly we could hear that coughing pant even from our position, at least two hundred feet away. And from behind it I suddenly saw another creature, almost the exact same save for a blackish splotch on its neck.

My first thought was, what in the world are two horses doing out here? Where did they escape from? But that'd just be too nice for it to be a horse. They were totally not.

On the head of the splotched creature, and near the spine of the other, a red number could be seen painted on each of them. 28 and 29.

"_They're failed ones."_ Zetsu's Darth-Vader side was whispering. "_None from any other laboratory were successful but us. Look at them._" And we looked, even though we didn't have to. Even from this distance, the six eyes each creature had were too huge and eerily pumpkin-colored to miss, not to mention how their mouths were on their necks instead of their faces. Jesus.

Failed was what they were and always would be. In danger was what we were now. Undoubtedly Numbers 28 and 29 were moving directly towards us.

"Kill them." Sasori commanded from slightly behind me. "Quickly, and with as little blood as…possible." He paused on the last word, because just before it, the animal with the black spot turned around and barked, and a third came out from behind it. A big 30 was stamped on one of its legs.

"Do it before there's a 31," Kakashi rumbled, and that was the command to go. Even I obeyed.

I leaped right off the tree branch and my wings unfurled with a cruel snap. I dodged branches and trunks that bulged in my direction and held my hand out towards 29, the one with the spot. It had the most vague of animal shapes: four legs, a body carrying both muscle and fat, a tail free of decoration. Its body was covered with hairs so invisible I first thought it had nothing but reptilian scales. The head, however, was most distinguishing. It was barely a head, just a spherical prop on the end of the neck with a half dozen spherical eyes sprinkled over it. This looked like the sort of alien you would shoot in a video game. The kind of thing that might kill you or might impregnate you.

At the last second I decided against the use of my electricity and flipped backwards acrobatically, delivering a hefty kick to 29's face. I felt one of its eyes smash like a thrown tomato under my bare foot which was effing _gross_ and to ignore that ugly feeling I reveled in the fact that my one kick sent the thing flailing twenty feet backwards in a flying tangle of legs. Somewhere near me, Kisame held down 28 while Itachi mercilessly ripped out its tongue. I didn't look, didn't need to look, because I'd already had nightmares about such things.

My hand shot up at at a fine time. I caught a heavy paw in my hand, and before its owner could flail or attack, I twisted round and punched. My hand hit a chin that felt like a diamond covered in felt, like almost-undisguised pain, and I screeched as the thing's head went flying into the snowy ground. 31's neck widened with a grin of its huge and misplaced mouth.

From behind, a fifth creature's teeth clamped around my leg—mother of God!—I felt my bone begin to crunch between those teeth, never mind the skin and flesh. The one that must have been 32, different only in that its fur was a lot thicker, pulled me out of the grasp of 31 and tossed me. I tried to open my wings while I moved through the open air but a trunk smacked my left wing back in my face and I did nothing but turn myself upside down! Dammit!

Somehow, pathetically, next thing I knew I'd hit water and all I could think was _freezing freezing freezing _because no matter how much I enjoyed cold weather I didn't enjoy _freezing to death _and the feel pond scum and algae did nothing to help me. I shut my mouth to conserve air and to keep little fish and leeches out and pumped my wings hard. I moved upwards so fast I almost couldn't control myself, but managed. I shoved a pile of algae out of my way and heaved my soaked, Arctic-temperature carcass onto the shore and shivered like a seizure victim.

Of course, since the devil likes to be a bitch, the wind of January snow blew right then and it was COLD. The bite wound 32 had given me still bled, and I could almost believe I was naked, I was so cold. Any second now, I'd had to get up, walk, probably run, and who knew if I could even put weight on that leg? A mutant animal had gouged me, for the love of…oh shit.

Some thirty feet away, among the sounds of Kisame and Kakashi growling and one of the creatures bellowing, Zetsu and Sasori each held one of Number 29's legs, but their eyes were locked on me. Sasori's scorpion tail was still as could be. It looked blacker than ever on a background of snow as did Zetsu's right half, but every last bit of them was black as hell to me. I didn't have to think to know they were recalling the hundreds of memories of the old days, the days when they put all their life energy into just trying to get one claw on me. I knew what they were thinking. I knew what they would do. I knew what I had to do, too.

I ran. They followed.

The old days were back. Here I was, soaked to the bone, wearing short sleeves in the dead of winter, pursued by a pair of demons. The first thing that came to my mind was the bare-boned structure of a plan. Branches, boulders and bushes were rushing past me with every step. Taking flight with wet wings, icy and wet wings, would be difficult, especially with foliage blocking me every two feet. Let's not forget my bleeding leg. I would have to push up with the other one. That movement and the final step of the run would be the same. But until then, what?

Should I turn back and shoot an electric blaze at them? What if I hurt them unintentionally, like I did Deidara and his eye when I first escaped? Why would I care about hurting those bastards unintentionally anyway? Should I avoid all conflict and just lead them back to the other boys and see if they could stop them? Or would they all join the rampage? Where was Itachi with his new "Protect Sakura" motto? Where was Neji, who had kissed me an hour ago? Naruto and his bearhugs? ...I thought so.

I had to do something. Anything. My leg wound pulsed with every step I took. Soon my leg could buckle and I might fall right on my back. I took a chance, maybe the worst, just as we entered a little, roomy grove of cedars and I heard one set of footsteps stop, as though one of two experiments had realized his madness. I took advantage of the generous space and half-turned around with my left hand extended, ready to punch and ready to electrify whichever fellow was left. It was the worst thing I could have done.

My wounded right leg felt the turn much worse than I thought it would. The turn twisted and contracted the muscles out of nowhere. I instinctively silenced my cry of pain and fell over—flat on my back. My heartbeat doubled and then tripled; my blood turned impossibly colder. I saw flytrap-less Zetsu, pouncing at me, white fangs bared, coat flapping behind him like demon's wings.

My blood froze. I couldn't breathe.

Zetsu landed on top of me, smothered me. My throat and belly were exposed to his fangs, claws and fists. He put a hand under my shoulder, pulled me up just so, pressed us intimately together…and would not stop pressing our bodies together.

"_Cold, cold, so damn cold,_" he kept muttering. One of his legs hooked under mine. His free arm pushed my wing closer in to my back and rubbed the part of it where ice had actually begun to form. The edges of his coat settled in the snow, settled over me. The coat and his motions and his body combined were all rather comfortably…warm. I couldn't tell if I was doing it on my own or if his foot was pulling, but my feet moved up and my knees moved closer to my chest till the entirety of my legs were safely under his and his coat. Was he trying to make me warm? Really?

**BAANG **

The noise nearly stopped my heart. It made Zetsu's entire body spasm. He stared down at me with his yellow eyes wide and I turned my head backwards and around, searching the grove desperately for an enemy. I stopped looking when I felt something wet and warm dribble onto my collarbone. I looked up and saw the trickle of blood draining off Zetsu. Draining off the bullet wound in his neck.

His mouth appeared to be trying to form a word when he fell to the side, one black hand still draped over me. My eyes turned wide as his had been five seconds before and I stared at him, listening briefly to the new, dogged and erratic heartbeat. I sat up quickly and felt his pulse, looked him in the pale, hurting, loving eyes. Horrified and furious and scared all at once, I looked up, stray wisps of hair moving about my face. I looked up for the shooter, and saw him immediately, almost straight in front of me—

He stood in a roof-less old Jeep, with two black-haired identical men in the front seats with a ponytailed boy squeezed in between them, and an unmistakable dark-skinned and stitch-covered friend of mine sitting in the back.

Hidan proudly lifted his shotgun and grinned at me.

666

I've been waiting to end a chapter with Hidan shooting an experiment for a long while. But always I was arguing between Sasori, Itachi and Deidara to be the one who pounces on Sakura. I switched to Zetsu because I recently read an update of Fallacy's "Take It Or Leave It" fanfiction, a phenomenal AkatsukixSakura story. It always leaves me thinking of Zetsu, even if he's hardly in the chapter.

What else should I say? Ah. The reason I did no reviews this chapter **(Edit, Dec. 2011: **back in the days when I publicly answered all reviews) was because everyone commented on Sakura piercing her larynx and everyone thought it would make her mute forever. I didn't want to have to address-slash-ignore that in every other review, so I just didn't do any. By now you should understand it was just a show to piss of Karin, make her believe Sakura had muted herself, when truly, she's quite allright and the metal currently lodged in her superhuman body doesn't bother out witty heroine too much. So it's all good.

Oh, and finally we get another look at the Sand Siblings after god knows how many chapters. And no, Gaara's not being tampered with by a Chambers spy or anything. He's just having medical trouble. Can't say anything else now, 'cause I need to go to school tomorrow. Got to read me some Lord of the Flies.

Ta…Storm


	23. Twentythird

**EDIT, January 2012: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful college student with friends and an actual life, (though fanfiction still triumphs over an actual life) and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through to meet the bar of her current writing skills...and then update the story!

Look at all the people giving it up for Zetsu! Of course people like him, canon and non, but among the experiments in this fanfiction he seemed "background" among fan favorites to me. Now everyone's all "NOOOES ZETSU! LIVE, ZETSU, LIVE!" Ah, what else to talk about up top?

Christmastime has come and gone and we all spent time with our swell family and got our presents. I received several books, couple games (including Okami, _yeeeeaah, _baby) and some of them that arrived by mail went to the wrong address, and we had to go to the strangers' house and ask for them. So now I've got about two thousand pages if not more of stuff to read. This makes Storm quite happy.

Ho, ho, ho and happy new year, bitches.

(**Unimportant Edit! This was the last chapter of Airborne to be posted in 2008.) **

…Chapter the twenty-third.

666

January 24th. 4:00-ish in the afternoon. Could be Saint Patrick's Day for all I care, I've got business that needs doing! …Sakura POV

666

Hidan. Hidan. Hidan. Hidan. Hidan!

I hadn't seen him in days. At least ten. I had left him with his cousin and with Shikamaru so I could go battle the four "attacking" experiments on the twelfth. So twelve days, really. Almost two weeks since I had seen him. It felt like years, like separate lifetimes.

For just a moment, hardly a second, I glanced over the passengers of the jeep I knew I'd seen before: there was Kakuzu, wearing some hoodie with funky words on it, those weird stitches he'd had since his car crash at age fourteen still remarkably crisp on him; Shikamaru, whom I'd seen only once before but would recognize anywhere with those funny eyes and vicious ponytail Rock Lee and his father Might Gai, volunteer wildlife rangers for some little town way up in Canada and eerily identical to each other; and Hidan. The one who had shot Zetsu. I said the first, stupidest thing that came to mind. I wonder what he thought of me when I said it.

"What the hell did you do that for?"

As you might expect, his posture went limp with surprise and he almost dropped the gun, which was also really dangerous. His face was something to laugh at, too. But in another second he'd drawn up the gun angrily again and was pointing his free hand at me. Free index finger, specifically. "That's the thanks I get for saving your little birdie ass from mutants? Do you know how long we've been driving around in this gas-guzzling piece of shit looking for you?"

"As much time as you should have spent _not _looking!" I shouted back. I on my knees, below him, but furious. Zetsu bled beside me. "I told you to stay home and let me deal with it!"

On cue, Kakuzu stood up and used a support-beam-bar-thing on the jeep to support himself. He carelessly shoved himself into our conversation. "Don't make this about us!" he said threateningly. "He's saved you from that thing. Why would you not be thankful?"

"Well, I'm not!" From out of the corner of my eye, there was Zetsu, eyes half-closed, possibly losing consciousness. "Come here and help me, and I'll tell you all about it!"

"Help you?" Shikamaru spoke for the first time. He raised an eyebrow, and I could just about see the thought processes swirling like hyper-speed spaceships in his eyes. "Is he your enemy or isn't he?"

Fuck. I didn't want to have to say this. For my pride and for the conscience and fears. For screwing up the decent-slash-dysfunctional camaraderie they were forcing me to accept. But adding more thought would poison it even more, so I said it. "He's not."

Small wonder, those two words brought all the guys up out of the jeep and dashing through the snow (Haha! On a one-horse open sleigh! No, not really.) towards me. Hidan had some trouble getting out. I think he got his shoe caught between the seats or something. Pff. He fell forwards halfway out of the jeep and I could see his boxers when his shirt and coat fell down a ways. I think they said "Hurley." Anyhow, they all got out of the old thing and came running to me. Lee, the one I hoped was Lee, seeing as his face was brighter and more youthful, dropped right on his knees to see me. Seeing as I'm a little tyke at five foot, five, he had to gaze down to see me, and I was happy to not look at him yet when there was other business to be done, such as working a bullet out of Zetsu's neck. The entrance wound was tiny, but the bullet was not. Perhaps the torn skin was closing or at least falling over it, making the wound seem smaller?

He had two heartbeats. I could feel them underneath my fingers. Twice the pulsations and movements of blood. Twice the blood loss or twice the speed of healing and cell growth? Or somehow both? If my theory was right—my theory which was based on logic and common sense, two things which didn't always apply to medical science—he had enough life force within his double self to withstand even a bullet piercing nearly into his windpipe…if I could remove the bullet quickly enough.

"Why are you helping him?" Kakuzu barked again. "Sakura...Sakura, why the hell are you helping him! Leave him!"

"Let me get the bullet out and I'll explain, okay? It's different than you think—"

"Oh, Christ, they brainwashed you. Oh my God."

"They did not brainwash me, Hidan, for goodness' sake."

"You can't be on the same side as these beasts, can you?" exclaimed Might Gai in a some...weird, loud voice. "Those beasts, those monsters, these two boys here have told me they've tried to maul for years now—"

"I'm the same amount of beast they are, mister. And Lee…" The boy of large eyebrows gasped like he was surprised I would speak to him. He was attentive and asked what I needed, and even said "miss Sakura" at the end. Pff. "Lee, first of all, I owe you a bag of cheesy snacks." They got a gratuitous second for that to sink in. Yeah. During that second, I pressed down on different spots of Zetsu's neck, feeling the location and depth of the wound. Digging it out this close to his throat was dangerous, so I was opting to nudge it in the right direction first. I told him to breathe more deeply. Then I added, "And less importantly, you don't need to call me 'miss.' No one does and no one should."

PIP! The bullet popped out of the hole in Zetsu's neck like an invisible fountain had tossed it up. I caught it in my left fist and smiled at it a little, 'cause that was a great mix of cool and efficient first aid. But Zetsu needed a little more examination than that, seeing as he'd just _been shot, _and my extra once-over showed that he was breathing all right and not drowning in his own blood. His eyes traveled slowly between the bullet in my hand and me. His mouth moved a bit but I couldn't figure out the words he was attempting to say. Instead I wiped away the blood from his bi-colored neck. I even maneuvered my wings around and flipped at the last dashes of blood with my wingtips, staining them red. I dipped them in snow to wash them free of nasty plantman blood and turned to Hidan. He was crouched near Zetsu, maybe four feet away.

He was just far enough away; I flung the used bullet at him and it bounced off the side of his head with a dull _PUNNG. _

"Gauhh, geez!"

"That's what you get!" I snapped at him and then returned to crouching over Zetsu. I held my breath so as not to disturb a single skin cell if I could help it. I held one hand just over his mouth so I could keep track of his breathing. While I squinted at the reddish hole on the side of his neck, he leaned up a few inches. His lips made contact with my fingertips. I let those warm little things stay there since he was wounded and it wouldn't do to shove him or yell at him when he's wounded. He and his comrades will hate me and be angry. He was making some weird romantic move on me while people were _watching _and I couldn't do anything, so I could only dream up plans of what to do later. Maybe stab a stick at his back, right between some verbetrae. That'll hurt.

Strange how Kakuzu spoke flatly when he asked, "Did he just lick you?"

"That...was more like a kiss. Actually."

"What the _fuck _did they do to you?"

"Miss Sakura, I fear the worst for you. They...did they _touch_ you?" Thank god that was Lee's father speaking. I would be stuttering like a fool if one of the cousins had asked. Since it wasn't, I only stuttered like…someone who was only fifty percent fool.

"They've…invaded my personal space a lot." I could see both cousins' faces, even Shikamaru's, twisting up as they got the completely wrong idea. I saved everyone some heartburn and elaborated. I told them how some invasions of my personal space had gone down in the past days. Deidara combed through my hair, Sasori and Itachi held my hand, they stared at me a lot...it was hardly worth complaining about on the surface, but these people (maybe minus Lee and his father) know the truth of things and what the ugly, bloody truth of what the male experiments wanted from me. By the time I made some hints about how Neji and Naruto had attacked me like loving little cats recently, they all looked like they had swallowed bricks. And that's how I felt talking about it.

"They've spent two weeks fondling you and you're still with them?" Shikamaru asked with more of a scoff in his voice than any real worry. "You haven't electrified them into toast yet?"

"Where are you going now?" Lee said with sudden shock. "That's what matters now, isn't it? We saw the grey animals with six eyes and Hidan tried to shoot one but it ran off before he could take aim, and—and—if they're still here—" (I interrupted him briefly to say, "Oh, no they're dead now," and Lee nodded and went on) "O-Okay, then you're safe for now, aren't you? Where are you going?"

I told them exactly the truth: that me and the other experiments had been discussing just that prior to being attacked, and we weren't sure if showing ourselves to the public was a good idea or a fatally stupid one.

It really surprised me when Kakuzu, uptight and pissy Kakuzu, laughed at that. "You wonder if it's a good idea? Really? _That's _your biggest topic of discussion?"Well, why was that weird? Please enlighten me, O swami. Do you not think people will be terrified of us, especially those led by overly religious mongers calling us sins against nature (since we were essentially shoved together from mismatching cells and decanted out of test tubes instead of being conventionally "born") "That's not even a question, Sakura. You need to show yourselves to people...we've been looking for you since the day after you left our house, you know that? But the public has known about your for half that time, and you're a sensation all over the world already. Everyone talks and wonders. I hear hundreds every day. And I've heard approximately thirty who had anything bad to say about you."

That was a blow to the face. Such a blow that my hand fell on Zetsu's face in surprise and it was actually a blow to his face. What's more, making sure of his health, making sure he wasn't choking presently on his own blood, seemed to matter a lot less all of a sudden. The people who disliked us...were a minority! "...What kind of things have you heard?"

His lips curved up, and since he still has scars of his stitches from his years-old car crash—did I never really mention he has those? Sorry.—made his lips look a lot bigger than they were. Like Heath Ledger the Joker lips. "I remember once who was at a Wal-mart near the country border. The television in the electronics section was showing you, and this brunette experiment, standing in front of your laboratory. Right before you got shot down. You mostly spoke English, and your friend said something totally in gibberish. And then you were shot down and taken into a truck." Hearing him recite this, just like Sasori and Naruto had recited it to me on the plane, was chilling. It was the exact same story, no biases, all witness accounts. We were shot and stolen away.

But back in the present, I just nodded for him to continue to the next part of the story. "This guy who was watching that footage on the TV, he was pouring out to his wife about how we shouldn't have shot those 'animal people', we should have listened to them, they were sentient and probably good, and it was the government's fault for hurting you and probably counted as animal abuse. Also, you screamed really loud and that amused him."

Well, I did remember crying out like a sick vulture that "we weren't dangerous" or something along that line. If I didn't say it loudly, if they didn't hear our message just because I was too shy to speak loud enough, that would have sucked, wouldn't it?

"There's also the woman who saw what the big blue one did at the Summit Bank last week. She was interviewed since she was friends with the woman he rescued." His face remained impassive; I wonder what rang through their minds when they first discovered that Kisame had rescued a person instead of eating her. "She said she wished she could kiss him to thank him for saving her friend. She was 'eternally grateful.' That he looked like a walking shark did not matter to her at all."

Kakuzu's face was now grave as he stared at me. "People already are feeling that you're a force of good. I didn't think I'd end up saying this, but you need to go show yourselves to people and prove it once and for all. The more time you spend hiding, the more time they have to imagine which horror movies are coming to life and how viciously they should get up in arms about this. And if you live the rest of your life hiding in the woods like little animals, someone will shoot you anyway."

"Fine logic."

Hidan lifted his gun and almost shot this new speaker. Thank goodness that I gripped the barrel and shoved it several inches into the ground when I did.

Walking calmly as ever through the trees and into our happy little clearing was Sasori, who appeared only mildly concerned one of his dearest friends was bleeding out the neck. Predictably, most of the human boys stared at the newcomer, the living, stable mutant, who was now more interesting than the barely-conscious, bi-colored and non-dangerous one laying next to them.

"Which one is that?"

"One of the crazy ones? The hyper ones?"

"Did he just say something about logic?"

"Sasori. No. Yes."

With his arms and legs shaking, Gai stood up. "I _understood _him!" he gasped, and I stared, wondering, processing, and unable to. From the reactions to footage of them, it had seemed to me that no regular person could understand the male experiments when they spoke. How could this man do it? How could he stand up and face Sasori like a new challenger? I stood up and was ready to protect him. Instantly. But he ignored me and called to Sasori again. "He said two words, didn't he? Three at the most. Scorpion beast! I implore you to repeat yourself!"

Sasori blinked in surprise and then repeated his two words. Gai stomped his foot on the ground and cried out like a peacock. Really. Even Kakuzu kind of jumped. "I understood you wholly that time! Fine logic is what you said, isn't it? Yeeeeess!"

This was no time to shout out random crap. Zetsu was still bleeding, and still breathing strangely. Sasori noticed. I took the reins of the situation again, warily. "I'm not going to explain the details now. Zetsu was shot and I can't do enough to help him. He needs a hospital. I've been told the greater part of the public doesn't resent us and the best course of action now would be to show ourselves."

He was walking closer and unbuttoning his coat as I talked. I kept my voice steady despite the fact that the guy was stripping in front of me (and several other men). Thank goodness I wasn't saying anything when he took off his cloak and put it gently over me; I may have stuttered. Much to my _anxiety and fear and heartbeat-skipping-horror, _everyone stared at me when I just accepted the coat with my eyes dejectedly aimed at the snow. "Have you forgotten you're still extremely wet? Walking in snow with soaked clothes will make you sick. I will make you warm."

Everyone's eyes suddenly went upwards, with Sasori being the only one standing, and I looked, too. His eyes were…not friendly in the least. A color I had begun associating with chocolate was now too dark to even called even that. But when he spoke his tone was neutral. "I agree also. Kakashi and Neji were the only ones truly against revealing ourselves, but there's no choice now. Zetsu must be treated and we will use the humans' car to take him somewhere. Translate that for the stupid ones if you must." Like a "stupid one" himself, Gai nodded with his mouth open. Then I felt both Sasori's hands reaching down for the first button of the coat, so as to secure it on me. He hooked it and left the others undone and gee whiz, wasn't that just charming and princely.

At which point in time I realized just how freaking freezing I was and almost bit my tongue off trying to keep my teeth from chattering.

Sasori's tail, still somehow warm, pressed up against my hip, and moved closer and tighter around and I was tenser with every inch…and I realized he was curling it around me like an arm and using it to pull me to a standing pose. "Come. We'll tell the others about Zetsu. The humans will store him in their car till we come back." He said. "And once we're past crowds of frightened people, I will find you your first pair of shoes. That you have been barefoot all this time is absurd and dangerous." As if the tail-fondling and whispering wasn't enough, he pressed his face lightly onto my cheek and purred at the same time, _again _going with his kitty cat theme that his friends played off of, being really warm and really close and making me feel really weird. It created a perfect moment of wide-eyed fear and confusion for me, and regular confusion for all the others.

But Sasori's tail pulled on me again. I sent a look with the message of, "I can't help it; I'm sorry!" to the eyes of whoever I could catch. They were all staring, naturally, but I could only lock gazes with Shikamaru. I pulsed my message as hard as possible, hoping that clever kid would understand, and us two half-humans were then running through the trees together, literally, together.

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January 24th, 4:30-ish in the afternoon …Yeah. That's it. …Sakura POV

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You guys don't require elaboration or extensive detail. It's not like you need it like food and water. So I'm not required to tell you about how my group of human stalkers followed Sasori and I into the woods. I'll just leave the matter by saying it felt so, so odd to be stalked by my friends, to leave them behind, to not be with them, and have to trudge through the woods alone with the beast that is Sasori. It felt so backwards to me, and as much heat as he was giving off, I wanted to walk with Hidan and Kakuzu.

By the time the humans arrived behind us, the plan had been relayed to all the other experiments. I kept my voice fairly cool and confident to keep from stuttering, you see, 'cause Sasori made a point to lick away any moisture he found on my cheeks or neck, plus the usual drama I have going on about being the savior of these beasts with every scrap of blame and liability on my eight-year-old shoulders. All I could do was wipe or scratch at the areas Sasori had touched when I thought he was looking elsewhere. It felt a bit rude, but he deserves that.

When my pathetic body had been mostly dried, when I had decided that while I enjoy the cold I don't enjoy freezing to death (they're different things, shut up), when the bodies of the failed experiments mostly buried and their scent mostly masked by the guys rubbing their shoes and jackets on every tree trunk possible, Hidan _finally _came stumbling through the trees. He tripped on a root sticking up out of the ground and got a face full of snow and dirt. He only got up when Neji snickered at him, even when Hidan pointed the gun in his face. That calmed Neji, who probably could have caught the bullet, but still recognized the anger it signified from Hidan.

Still, Sasori stepped in front of me and I was reminded of the promise that had been made to me several times: that, allegedly, any of these men would take bullets for my sake. I didn't want to take that risk due to...you know, I'm responsible for them. This should be turning into old news. But hey, you know what's not old news? Hidan seeing all of us the same time. At long last he can see us as a set, as individuals of the same group of mutants. I'm suddenly embarrassed that I have to be a part of this group.

"Jesus _Christ," _he choked, and shivered. He pointed his gun at them. He looked less angry and determined now, more mortified, more like a vulnerable human being.

He was my friend, frightened, and Sasori and his stupid tail are trying to keep me from going over there. I slapped my hand just behind the stinger and pulled, twisted, shoved but geez he was stubborn. Get _off _me, you stupid ginger! There. I was free of him and I went to Hidan and put my arm around him and crouched by him. But he barely seemed to notice me.

He pointed it up into a tree at Naruto and behind another one at Deidara sitting on a rock and just all over the place. He looked so mortified, so genuinely afraid. My friend was afraid and I ripped Sasori's tail off me to go to him, but even when crouched down and put my arm around him, he brandished the gun. "This is them, Sakura, oh my God, oh my fucking shitfaced _God._" He kept muttering as Lee and his father came pouncing much more gracefully through the snowy woods. They had decided to not do as Sasori said (plus five points for them) and just carry the half-conscious Zetsu between them. This is actually very smart; I fully blame Sasori for distracting me so I somehow couldn't see that leaving a half-conscious comrade lying in the snow where aggressive mutants have been spotted was not okay.

Gai, Lee's father, attempted to grasp the reins from me, so to speak. I admired him suddenly. "Are any of you capable of talking besides the scorpion?" he inquired. I took it upon myself to answer him, "Everyone here can speak perfect English. I'm thinking that you can understand Sasori because you've spent so much time with animals." I looked to Kakashi, standing serenely a little ways over there like he was waiting for a bus. Hmph. I can fake confidence, too, you twat. "Is that right, Kakashi?" He gave me a look that suggested he had no clue himself, but answered, "Well, it has to be. Nothing else would make sense, would it? Did you understand that, mister…?"

"Gai, thank you." said Gai, smiling at himself. "We've brought your friend…It didn't seem proper to put him in the jeep and leave him. I don't suppose any of you have medical experience of any kind?"

Our medical experience was all on the...receiving end of the spectrum. Being cut open with scalpels and no morphine doesn't mean you know much about either instrument. Kisame, who caught some bug, fever or disease almost monthly, looked like he was trying to think of something to say, but he kept silent. As far as I knew, that only left me, the one who had done thorough mental studies of the functions of many medical instruments and substances. But it's not like that's enough to perform surgery on someone. And why should I put thought into that if Zetsu is going to a hospital full of professionals anyway? I relayed these thoughts to everyone. Gai then finally understood we were heading into town now. For publicity.

Lee, perhaps feeling awkward, or thinking others were, said, "I think we should all move back toward my father's jeep now. Th—Zetsu is still bleeding and…there's no better time than the present, right?"

There were a few one-lined agreements from the other experiments, which were enough to amaze Lee, who apparently was also understanding the male experiments to some degree. Zetsu was transferred to Itachi and Kisame, and they went ahead to make him comfortable in the jeep. Everyone moved back to it at their own pace but I made sure to fly over there speedy-quick. This was partially to avoid Sasori, partially to stretch my wings as I soared just over the treetops, and partially to make sure nothing dangerous was awaiting us. Kisame had taken off his enormous (fitting for him, though) coat and lain it down in the car to make the ride softer for Zetsu. The human boys in the car all scooted and squished themselves to make room for him but he still complained of it being uncomfortable. I took his ease of using his vocal chords as a good sign.

And geez, it is weird right now. A big bunch of humans and non-humans, working together, heading for a publicity stunt...what _is _this? I'm Sakura, The Fountain of Answers, but I've got nothing. I'm nervous.

Now we mutant folk were divided into two groups, running along both sides of the highway, parallel to Lee and Gai's jeep. I was running just next to the right lane, as close as any of us could get without coming out of the trees. Neji and Sasori were both to my right, but frankly I didn't much care. From where I stood—um, ran—I could see Zetsu's face and shoulder inside the car. Most of his neck was blocked by the frame of the jeep, but I could still see bloodstains from where I was. And something about them bugged me.

Once I was sure there were no other cars near (wouldn't that be funny if there was one, I could shout "car, car!" like I'm a kid playing baseball in the street...where did I get that from?) I leaped out of the trees to check it out. My wings opened almost like they had their own mind to do it. It was a little difficult this time, and I was still wearing Sasori's coat, and it lay over my wings, so they had to wiggle a bit to get out from under the coat before making their first flap. I managed to hover over the moving vehicle and grab one of the jeep's extending poles to support myself.

I stared straight down at a relaxed-looking, flytrap-less Zetsu. His recent blood loss made me more confident that he wasn't feigning sleep to lure me in and sink his teeth into my flesh, so I had no problem examining his wounds and poking one finger at a splotch of blood, which wasn't even dry. "It's not clotting," I said over the wind, as the jeep didn't even have a real roof.

When I heard the "Whaaaat?" of a deafened human dude below, I said more loudly, "His blood isn't clotting, it's too thin!" No one was struck by this news, because they're all morons who can't tell a femur from a stethoscope! Augh! "He could still bleed to death!"

Lee practically erupted in horror and even Kakuzu reacted. (There! Geez!) "Put pressure on the entrance wound, come on! It still hasn't stopped yet." Kakuzu gave me a list of drugs that could help with this: lovenox, clexane (I think I used to take those pills with that name) and others. Good, finally his doctor-ness is kicking in. I remember when he measured my wingspan at his house and...and Shikamaru is being all bothersome trying to rip a blanket from under the seat and push it onto Zetsu's still-bleeding gash. Almost in harmony with that, I heard a horn giving a big, long honk behind us. My limbs felt numb for a brief, paralyzing moment and I turned my head mid-flight to see an SUV not far behind the jeep. There was a man up front, mouth moving fast, and two children in the back seats, leaning forward as far as their seatbelts would let them to see me.

This could backfire _severely. _But it had to be done.

I kicked against the jeep to back-flip in the air—a few memories of aerobic obstacle courses in the Chambers lab came to mind—and then twisted around, heading for the SUV. The father up front gave a start, yelled and lost his grip on the wheel. It started scooting towards the median. My limbs went numb again, numb and cold, since I had once indirectly killed someone this way. I would never forget that. So I sped towards the car to steer it back into the lane. Just as my hands touched the hood, the car and I were both violently shoved back.

Running on the median was Naruto, looking proud of himself for saving the family from crashing. But the father just started screaming and veered his car to the opposite lane to get as far away as possible. I saw that the kid on the right had opened their window to stare at me. I leaped off the car—I didn't want to hang out on the hood when the guy needed to see past that area—and it covered several meters while I opened my wings. I flapped hard to catch up to it again and flew as close as I could to the kid's window. My left wing was held above the car to keep from smacking it, and my right did slow, powerful flapping to compensate.

"Can you tell your dad to calm down?" I asked the kid. "He's going to kill you guys! And there's no need for screaming, it's not like we're going to hurt you, okay? You hear that, Dad?" The aforementioned Dad looked at me in the rearview mirror and nodded vigorously. "Excellent. I've got to go now, but you'll probably see me on TV soon. Watch the news, 'kay!" I barrel-rolled to the side to give myself good flapping space, then sped up to the jeep again.

I alighted and then crouched down on my hams on the edge of one of the seats. I would have fallen out of the car if I hadn't held one of the jeep's beams….no wait, that's Kakuzu's arm. (Man, he's stiff!) Naruto was still running on the median, but parallel to us now instead of the other car. I called out to him, "Naruto, get someone else over here! More than one person's gotta hear this!"

He nodded and obediently jumped back into the woods parallel to the highway—across three lanes, at least twenty feet—and shook Itachi's shoulder. Some words were exchanged and before I knew it the both of them were running on the median, waiting for commands like obedient little henchmen. I'd had a plan vaguely sketched in my head about our publicity since after I'd landed the plane, but now it came together in detail, and I told it to them.

"We can't all run into the city after the jeep, unfortunately some of us have to run into town following it. But we'll still be out of sight, because we'll be following the jeep from the rooftops." I got some stares indeed when I said that. "We can keep the car in sight more easily that way. We jump down to ground level once we're within sight of the hospital, and walk straight in with Zetsu. This means you have to cross the parking lot and maybe a sidewalk, and people there might freak but you must _ignore them _and just go inside and wait for me." Naruto nodded fervently. A good little henchman.

From the nearest passenger seat, Kakuzu was giving me a freakish look, and when I looked at him too to ask what was up, he tore his eyes away and down to Zetsu, who might have been sleeping. I gave instructions over his funny behavior. "You guys find some hospital that's not smack in the middle of the city and we will follow you, don't worry about that. And by the time you park and take Zetsu out of the car, we'll be back with you. We're a large group, but we should go in together. Maybe single file, that looks less intimidating."

"But some of the roofs are really big, Sakura. What if we can't always make the jumps?" Naruto asked, and I thought it was a pretty sensible question…for him. "Kisame can't jump that high, and I don't know if Deidara can either—"

Oh, please, you people underestimate the things I can accomplish under horrible, life-threatening stress. "If someone can't jump, I'll carry them to the next roof."

Even Itachi's face burped up a little surprise there. Naruto's was equal parts surprise and a visual "squee" of excitement. He's probably not afraid of flying. And he'll also probably be cuddling me the whole way up. Yeah...no. This thought made me add, snappishly, "And only the ones who can't jump up. If you can jump and you waste your time letting me carry you, it's more time we're not with Zetsu and more time the others have to wait in the parking lot with a bleeding black-and-white person in their car. Now one of you go to each side of the road and relay that to the others. I've gotta go say hello to Mr. Five-M-P-G over there." And that was that. I'd just said hey to the driving daddy, now let's go say hi to this new guy in a blue Hummer. He swerved a little in surprise, too, but I shoved his car back on track and waved. He did, too. I could see him through the window starting to laugh a little hysterically. I waited till he was calm and more observant.

Three more people down. Hopefully they won't be able to spread the news of us in the time it takes to drive Zetsu to his medical saviors.

Mere minutes later, buildings began to appear on either side of us, and the male experiments all jumped with their own unique degree of ease or struggle onto their first rooftop to remain out of sight. I had to grab at Kisame's shoulder once he landed to pull him up fully. We continued to follow the car (and I almost crashed into a billboard. Crest toothpaste almost had my face splattered all over it). This looked a bit like suburban shopping districts now but it was fading into an urban landscape fast. The rooftops _were _very tall. This might take an extra five minutes. Pray that none of these idiots are afraid of flying.

In a few more minutes, we'd be done with the roofs and plop down in front of a hospital, and people would see us, really. They'll stare and screech and take pictures. Someone might even shoot. I can only hope and be ready. The males ought to be ready, too. After all, they're just mindlessly following me. Leaving it up to Sakura. Whoo.

Time to take charge again, and probably in front of cameras.

Oh _hell, _would there be cameras.

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January 24th, 5:09 PM, so says the clock on the bank I just jumped over. …Kisame POV

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It's both heartwarming and embarrassing to think of Sakura lifting me—me, one hundred and ninety-seven pound _me_—onto a six-story financial aid building. It had been the closest one available that we could jump onto without having passersby see us. She had grabbed Deidara by the hand first, mindful of his fear of heights, run with him for several feet and took off with a spectacular leap. In all honesty, the quiet, sure majesty of that event completely made me forget that Deidara was half-drowned with fear at that same moment.

She soared a bit over the roof, grabbed his other hand and dropped him evenly down on the concrete surface. I had watched Deidara's trembling legs and felt sorry for him until I was tapped on the shoulder and told that it was my turn.

I was last of the three who had needed to be hauled up. One look at her cool, sweet face almost made me think she hadn't yet started and still had all her strength ready and waited to be used. I had laughed and said, "You sure you can take me?" But she had laughed too and took my hand in hers. I almost laughed again when she looked and found the sizes contrasting, and used both of her petite ones to cover mine.

We started walking. "I will, I've probably lifted heavier things than you. And if I don't, Zetsu will have to wait for us to built a catapult to toss you up."

Yes, it stung when Zetsu was suddenly the one she was concerned for. Zetsu, along with Neji, who had spent a week with her alone. Asleep on a plane, yes, but with her. My lip twitched in frustration but frustration was replaced with fear and shock when suddenly we were off the ground. The little one was flapping heavily to move us both upward and her mouth was contorted into a frown. I could imagine her teeth gritting behind her lips. I would much rather imagine that than people who are possibly looking up from the street and seeing a girl with wings carrying a beast like me through the air.

"What's so awesome about Zetsu?" I asked, prodding. We were halfway up. Someone looking out the second-story window would see us. And look at me, making conversation in mid-air.

"I took the bullet out but he's still bleeding much more than he should be. He needs help and we need to be at the hospital to make people understand we're good."

"So he gets special treatment because he's injured?" I had scoffed teasingly. I was trying to make it light-hearted. And, yeah, distract her from my weight. .

But she looked down at me and her face was all seriousness. "What would you do to me if he died because I didn't get there quickly enough?" I couldn't answer her, because...I'm not sure why. She's wrong, but what else can I say to her when she listens to nothing truthful we say? Please, what can I say?

I was set down and Sakura stretched her arms casually, as though recovering from a brief workout. She wordlessly deflected any evidence that we'd just spoken of death. "All right, everyone's up. The car may have moved three blocks at most. And it went over—" Neji and Sasori had both pointed their tails vaguely east, and we all quieted down to hear a faint honking noise. Wordlessly we headed towards it.

Now as we jumped from rooftop to rooftop, I was still contemplating, first, how to talk to her again, and second, how to begin respond to a question like that.

I grunted as I leaped from a three-story to a four, and looked down to see cars and people and glowing signs like I'd never seen before. I looked down every chance I got to see all those new things: the McDonald's, the Hot Topic, the Best Buy, the Ed's Family-Owned Plumbing Service, and all the people buzzing outside them. Deidara muttered something to me as I bumped into him but even when I jumped, I kept my eyes below, on society. Two girls in tall shoes and ponytails like Deidara's. An old woman talking to a police officer, in a strapping blue uniform I remembered from when I rescued the hostages from the bank. There were trash cans and traffic lights and lots and lots of windows. It was all very exciting, and I would have loved to stop and be able to look some more. Or have Sakura explain it to me.

Someone slammed their hand onto my chest and I was about to turn to them and ask what the hell that was for when I saw a building across the street from us. My reading skills were fifth-grade at best. I could see "hospital" and..."Emanuel", "Emaniel", or something, and tons of cars in the parking lot. There was an ambulance parked on the south entrance of the building and just in front, a jeep. Where Hidan sat like some kind of psychopath, slamming his hand on the jeep's horn. Interesting how I didn't hear that till now.

There was a scraping sound to my left and I saw both Sakura and Sasori digging their nails under a thin line in the roof. It cracked and a little jagged block of stone came off in each of their hands. "Aim close and don't hit the car," Sasori murmured to her with his mouth close to her ear. Sakura tossed her rock in response and Sasori threw his a moment after. They flew in almost straight lines and struck the pavement near the jeep's front tires with sounds almost like the impact of bullets. Gai stood up in the car some kind of kung-fu position, probably saying "HYAAH" but seeing no enemies.

"I should go in first." Sakura murmured, her eyes on Gai. "People can understand my speech. I'll try to talk to someone inside….Mm…You count to thirty, slowly, after I go inside, and then follow me in." There was an unspoken command to do it quickly and quietly. We'd have no problem with that. She made as if to jump down, and then added, "This is only two stories, Deidara. I know you're afraid and I know you can jump this anyway. And I have yet to steer you wrong." She jumped off the edge of the shop we stood on and zoomed down towards Gai.

This meant she was gone to see his face light up with joy like an uncaged bird. Deidara, so boisterous normally and so...ignored by Sakura normally, had her attention and her confidence and I would bet both my arms that he'll hold onto that fora long time.

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January 24th, possibly the day someone will shoot me, 5:13 PM, so says the jeep's clock, undoubtedly the time my life of hiding from the public will end …Sakura POV

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"What...did they already take him in?" I demanded to Gai the second I landed on his jeep.

He was still in his tae-kwon-do pose but he answered me clearly. "Shikamaru and Hidan had him between them, and once a nurse came into view, they followed her—"

"You were supposed to wait for...God. Okay, let's go," I said, grabbing his wrist and dragging him. "I'm gonna try to explain to someone me and the others don't mean harm, and if they try to run away when they see me—"

"I will hold them down?"

"That would be awesome."

The hospital doors opened before us, and we didn't even have to move them. The front lobby contained an information desk and several chairs, four of which were occupied. I looked at the people in them and looked for signs of a calm personality, someone who would be more likely to sit and tremble than scream and kick upon hearing me speak English. I was glad to be doing this, actually, despite how hard it made my heart pound.

Better to just do it than to think about how it can backfire and cause worldwide terror. And "terror" is what was on those folk's faces right now.

I opted to address all of them. "Did any of you see me on television last week?"

"Yeah." choked out the preteen kid wearing his hat backwards. None of the others said anything.

"Thanks for not screaming, first of all. And secondly," I tried to smile a little. Probably failed. Oh my God, I'm talking to people. "I. Come. In. Peace. Do you understand? Yes? Yeah? Good, I have witnesses. I'm dangerous if you're trying to kill me, but _only_ if you're trying to kill me. So be nice to my friends and me, and everyone can be happy."

There was silence for another five seconds. In less than ten, the boys would be coming in. I backed up a step and looked out the glass doors. Itachi was slowly standing up and my wings bristled like porcupine spines. I held my hands up again and said quickly, "Okay—oh geez, I didn't say my name yet, did I? I'm Sakura, and eight others like me are going to come in here in about ten seconds; _please _don't scream when you see them, okay? They're good, and if you've spent a lot of time around animals, you might be able to understand their talk—"

The doors slid open. "By the way," I kept going, so their minds wouldn't be _completely _blown if the male coming in had wings or a tail that could effectively blow all minds in the vicinity, "did any of you see a bunch of boys come in here a few minutes ago, carrying a guy with, er…"

"With…skin that was t-two colors?" finished a bespectacled woman fearfully. I nodded and said, "Yes, which hallway did they go down?" But I didn't receive an answer to that. The silence was broken this time by a pair of footsteps, meaning two men, meaning double the chance that it was one who looked particularly inhuman. I was afraid to look but I can be a real blockhead sometimes so I did. Behind me stood Kisame and Deidara. The one with blue skin and the one with blue wings. And dressed in mostly dark colors, smooth, outdoor I'm-going-out-to-kill-someone-honey clothes, they didn't look as…appealing as they could have.

Deidara was looking around with his hands in his pockets. "Are we still questioning or do we have his room number now?" he asked casually.

The woman with glasses who had stuttered just a moment ago started gagging and shaking, but she pointed down the hallway nearest the reception desk. "They...th-th-they all went d-down _there_."

"Cool, mm." he grinned. "Kisame, come on, move your fat ass! She said _this _hallway." As Deidara began pushing the irritated-and-nervous Kisame down the aforementioned hallway, the door opened again and in walked everyone else. Calmly and casually, as was the wise thing to do. Even Naruto was keeping his cool. He waved hello to the four people in the chairs, and upon hearing a question from Hat Boy, Neji confirmed himself as "the one that was with the pink girl before they got shot" on television. Me, Neji and Kakashi stayed behind to keep the people in the waiting room calm and talkative, even though it should have been me going down the hall and not here in a supporting role. Like, seriously. I just sent Kisame, Naruto and Deidara into a public area all alone. Oh no oh no oh geez oh crap uh uh uhm what do I do now...ugh, now the people are talking.

"I don't have any pets." the kid was saying. "I visit my dad sometimes, an' he's got six dogs, But I still can't get what that cat man is saying."

"Ha, you poor boy. I haven't had a pet since my goldfish when I was eleven. I can understand them fine." scoffed the business suit-clad woman next to the preteen. "Oh, uhm, you said your name was Neji? Neji, I think your accent is very attractive. Were you engineered someplace foreign? Where are you from, I mean?" Well, this is one woman we don't have to calm anymore. I can't help but wonder what kind of person this woman is in everyday life. Perhaps one that normal folks will stare at.

Our lovely caracal experiment was in the middle of muttering, "Accent? I've got an accent?" when I interrupted to say, "That entails a long and depressing story, but the main point would be that we were born and raised not very far from here. Within the state."

"You're American?" gaped the chubby man near the woman with glasses.

To help illustrate (or exaggerate) the point of our nationality, I put a hand over my heart and said, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America." The man laughed aloud.

"But your names are all Japanese," said the business suit woman curiously. "That's...rather confusing."

"We were all named by the same little group of brilliant and confusing people. Brilliant and confusing Japanese people." Kakashi answered suavely. I must be a pretty brat on the inside, because I wish I'd been able to give that answer instead of him.

"But _how _are you...I...how do you speak English? Were you taught?" asked glasses-lady.

I could literally feel the small and adoring smiles being directed at me by the two inhuman men at my sides. I heard Kakashi taking in a breath to say something that probably would make me want to hide or wallow in embarrassment. Thank goodness Neji clapped a hand onto Kakashi's shoulder, and said, "Quiet. Listen. Above us." Even the humans in the waiting chairs looked up. Being awesomely superhuman myself, I heard the faint stomping noise above us. _Bam-bam BAM. Bam-bam BAM. Bam-bam BAM. _

"That's Naruto's signal." Neji murmured. "He must want us to come up."

"I would guess third floor." I said with my eyes on the ceiling. "There's a fourth floor as well but the noise wasn't quite high enough to be from there."

"Then let's get to the elevator and find out." A hand was gently taking hold of my arm and tugging me in the direction of the elevator. I moved, waving goodbye to the random human acquaintances I'd made. We got in the elevator, pushed the "Three" button (and thank goodness only the properly-thinking experiments are here, otherwise all the buttons would be pressed by now) and had to listen to some quiet and amusingly bad music on the way up. The elevator doors opened and two nurses in red scrubs, respectively blonde and black-haired, were standing just in front of the door. Blondie jumped upon seeing us, the other was shaking like mad. Typical reactions, that's fine. "Are you three looking for your friend Zetsu?" the jumper asked in a hilariously high-pitched voice.

"That's exactly what we're doing." I replied with a little smile. "Is he being treated now?"

"Our supervisor's told us to make sure you aren't terrorists," said the blonde, and at that I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. "And...uhm...uh, it's policy that we check your pockets and sleeves for weapons. Just policy. Please." She was clearly very scared, so we appeased her by removing jackets and pulling up sleeves. Or at least those two did, I had neither one. And for the first time in my life I felt a bit ashamed of that. I was clearly missing something normal and good. It wasn't fair that Neji and Kakashi got to have those things when they would make no use of them with their animal brains.

"I assure you we're no threat," Kakashi tried to console them as his coat fell to a pool at his feet. "I'm too soft to be a terrorist. Neji, tell them I'm too soft to be a terrorist," and he both playfully and painfully kicked Neji in the knee. "Can either of you understand me at all?" Since they both stared, wide-eyed the entire time, I assume neither of them could near anything but soft and mindless growling ,which was too bad. I tapped the blonde on the shoulder. Her eyes, now wide and watery and accompanied by a ridiculously red face, stayed locked on the two boys. They were now down to their last black shirt and layer of socks. They were remarkably tight shirts, I must say. Showed off every lean muscle they had.

"Excuse me, nurse."

"You. Are. _Beautiful._"

"Miss nurse?"

The black-head turned to me when her blonde companion did not. She seemed to see me for the first time. "Oh, you're…" she trailed off, giggled, and clutched her clipboard a little tighter to her chest. "You're adorable! Oh, lord, you know what a shame it would be if a cutie like you were a terrorist? Oh! I wish I could take you home, oh my gosh, that little bit of hair in your eyes—and your eyes are so big and bright and your wings are so _sleek_—" Okay, this woman is making Business Suit Lady look like nothing. Back the heck off, lady. I stepped away from her, and yes, it looked negative and unfriendly but...will you stop trying to touch me, lady!

A hand stuck itself in between me and the chatterbox nurse and grabbed my arm. I was pulled by Kakashi gently and firmly sideways almost right into his chest. "Is it obvious yet that we have no bombs or knives?" Since he knew the nurses could not understand him, he gestured to his entire body to show that there was nothing on it but the barest pants and muscle shirts (and scarf, for Kakashi).

"Is he offering himself?" whispered the blonde to her friend.

You! Are! Stupid! How did you get through med school! I was so kind as to inform this nimrod, "No he's not!" He's saying there are no bombs or knives anywhere on them…Are they allowed to un-strip now?"

"I'm actually very comfortable like this," Neji commented, twitching his feline ears vivaciously. "This hospital's heated well. I could go around in nothing but boxers if the temperature is like this."

"Noneedforthatlet'sgo." I said like such a fool that I literally cringed at my own stupidity and got a cramp in my arms from it.

"Wait! Wait!" the blonde nurse exclaimed, putting her hand on my shoulder. "Hey, even a random angel girl isn't allowed to—"

"Where would I hide weapons, in my cheek pouches?" I was making a lot of dumb jokes today. "Kakashi, Neji—"

"Sakura, you should be polite and at least check your pockets." I was still quite close to Kakashi, and the horrible rat took advantage of the moment by putting his hand on my head and petting, actually petting, me. I stared at my feet, because it was better than stuttering like a goddamned schoolgirl. Neji came over, saying, "Please, little one, do this for them and we'll go," and added his own hand—under my chin, just where it wasn't wanted, just where he could dig his claws into my throat. I stared wide-eyed at him, shocked that he would _dare _do that when he was fully aware I would give him a good thousand volts if he kept it up.

CLICK.

I could feel my pupils dilating.

I looked to my left, where the flash had come from. There should have been nothing at that end of the hallway but two doors and a window. There was a woman there, a window that had been opened to make the best of the fading twilight, a stairwell door that had been opened, and a large camera. Like instinct, I suddenly knew exactly what had happened. I would have kept my cool naturally, but the horror I was feeling then helped a lot as well.

"What magazine are you from?"

The stuttering glasses-wearing woman from downstairs giggled and lifted a card from her breast pocket. "Oh, I was just hired, but I'm here for 'Us Weekly'!"

I think I just bit a hole in my tongue.

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Isn't that a perfect way to end your day? Photographed with two men in muscle shirts petting you? Nice way to end 2008, too. I'm glad I got this done in time. It's my Christmas and Year-End gift to you guys. Hopefully this will get your mind off the depressing filler arc Shippuden is now going into, and, if you're still happy about your Christmas gifts, you can be even happier.

But back to the story: isn't it amazing how stuff just manages to work out? Sakura mutes herself, but then she's not mute; Zetsu gets shot in the neck, but then he's okay because he's got two strong heartbeats to support himself till he can be surgically put together again; the mutant experiments throw themselves into the public and aren't shunned and shot and screamed at. It's all going good, isn't it (except for poor innocent Sakura's photograph with two sexy men inevitably being read by millions round the globe!)? Except for those mutant Numbers that they fought last chapter; those things are rather nasty, aren't they? God forbid they start attacking regular people, AHEM.

I dedicate this chapter to **Vesper-chan, **by the way, because her birthday passed on the twenty-first and I had meant to finish this sooner to be in time for that. Alas.

Ta…Storm


	24. Twentyfourth

**EDIT, January 2012: **Once upon a time, StormDragon666 was a friendless, awkward fourteen-year-old who sat alone at lunch in eighth grade every day. Throughout the school day, she looked forward to coming home to go online and gawk at how many people loved her story, Airborne. Now, August 2011, Stormdragon666 is a successful college student with friends and an actual life, (though fanfiction still triumphs over an actual life) and has decided to edit Airborne all the way through to meet the bar of her current writing skills...and then update the story!

Yikes, here comes the part where the public will not be fully exposed to the nine experiments, and I can't promise it will be realistic, because heck, who knows how people would really react to such a situation? The closest model I can draw on would be the reaction to E.T.: HASMAT suits, potential capture and experimentation in the name of science...sound familiar? I think I'll make up my own public consensus.

(I recall some complaint when I first posted this chapter: that it was basically just filler, and they're right in a certain way. I mean this chapter is mostly about "public reaction" instead of...erm, "action" but it's rather silly to say public reaction to experiments is either filler or silly. I would call it pretty effing important, as surreal as it is.)

Chapter the Twenty-fourth.

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January 24th. 5:59 PM. But I don't really give a fuck about time right now. …Kakuzu POV

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"And I heard this big BAM noise out of nowhere. Zetsu stopped moving and I saw there was a hole in his neck, bleeding like a broken dam. He fell over, so I had the room to sit up and I saw you. You and the others, and Hidan standing up in the jeep with his rifle."

"Shit."

"I spend twenty minutes spilling my heart out to you and the first thing you say is 'shit?'" Scathing words, lighthearted tone, though, so I felt no remorse. "I was expecting more of, you know, 'I'm glad you're all right' or something like that. Also, I wanted to ask you, where's your car? When the others and I stayed at your house, it wasn't there."

"Yeah, I'm confused about that, too," I told her. I could have said something else on the tragic death of my car. But its pretty appearance had been inversely proportional to how well it functioned, and I could buy a fairly priced new one. I wanted to talk about other things, so steered us that way. "But I'm way more confused now than when you left my house a couple weeks ago."

The two of us were sitting in two chairs at the end of Zetsu's hall, where he lay in room 364. Sakura had related everything to me, and like usual, she was adept at showing anger, frustration, and confusion with pleasant tinges of sarcasm to lighten her dark days and tales. Here she sat, with that little smile and that thoughtful and curious stare she often had in my memory. At least that remained unchanged. But what had changed was one of the most central traits of her personality: her hatred and her fear of the eight other experiments who had snarled and lunged at her like savages every time they'd been allowed near her.

Before, they'd been spoken of like germs or monsters, creatures so horrible they could only exist in movies or stories. They had been things that killed just because they could. Now she talked about them like bugs, and by that I mean…annoying. She talked about them like they were trouble to deal with, but always there. Dependably. _Like she was starting to depend on them. _

"I'm confused why you talk about them like they're just annoying people." I spat out the last part without meaning to. Maybe. Whatever. I stuck my hands irritably in my pant pockets so they wouldn't be creating a picture of dumbfounded awkwardness just sitting on my lap. "They don't sound like killers anymore, they sound like hindrances. Like…like little kids you have to drag around with you. Occasionally helpful little kids." She sighed while avoiding my face. So I had ample opportunity to try and read the answer in her face. I couldn't.

"I know." she murmured, like she was still in thought. Her eyes brightened to life again, flitting down the hallway to make sure no one was coming down to see us. "I've been around them…less than two weeks, really. It's unreal how much I understand them in just that much time. I really wish I didn't. I don't _want _to. I don't _want _to talk about them like they're annoying or helpful, I _want _to talk about them like I used to."

Her big eyes darkened again, this time not with thought. "Their game is so convincing Kakuzu, you wouldn't believe it." She drew one leg up onto her chair and put her arms and head over the knee, troubled again. "If Zetsu dies I know they're going to blame me. The punishment for the loss of one of their brothers could mean the loss my of wings, or a hand, or my eyes."

I could sympathize. From what she'd told me, their actions sounded purely affectionate. In an alternate universe where they were being truthful to her, I would think the other eight viewed Sakura as their baby. Which is _damned _weird even for mutants; I don't even want to think about that. I didn't know what to tell her because I thought their game was convincing, too. These things were a lot smarter than I had first thought. I said exactly what I'd thought, something I'd thought for many days now.

"You need help."

"Yeah, I had this impression that my mental state isn't the most—"

"I don't mean that," I cut her off, moving my eyes from their stubborn place on the wall. "I mean someone to _help you._"

She lifted her head from her previous vulnerable-looking posture. "You mean someone to help me _do _things…"

"Someone to keep you from getting shot unconscious and thrown onto airplanes, keep tree branches from stabbing holes in your wings, from sleeping in shorts way up in a tree, in January, in the snow—how did you not _mind _that?" I didn't expect an answer, because around the time I came to "holes in your wings" she had started snickering, and then laughing, so she had bowed her head again and her knee kept me from seeing her face. But the laughter was making her shake all over, so I knew by listing her various troubles I'd done something good.

She lifted her head again, eyes still looking bright, and said with some amusement still in her voice, "That someone would have to be able to take care of themselves without me protecting them, and also be someone I'd trust my life to. They fit the first category," and there was no need to specify the identity of the "they", "and you and Hidan fit the second."

Predictably I couldn't move my mouth. It was pretty amazing how I was able to sputter, "What?" without moving my mouth.

"I'd trust my life to you two. No question."

"You knew us for two days. Less than two."

"They were the best less-than-two days of my life, and always will be."

She meant that. She really did; so I just stared at her. Since you don't have a spiced-up life like mine, you don't know what it feels like to spend time with a cute humanoid girl and find she enjoyed that time just as much as you. And thinking those thoughts made it difficult to transition into something else. I know my attempt wasn't as well-crafted as it ought to have been. "Whatever happened with the needle in your neck? Does speaking still hurt you?"

"It dissolved, I think," she shrugged. "I haven't thought about it since I stepped off the plane. Or right before, actually. I screamed at Sasori for the flying technique they were using and…I never felt any more pain from speaking."

"You should ask one of the doctors to look at that."

"Maybe when they're done fondling the others." We both looked to the far end of the hall, where it curved into a new hall at a corner. In this corner we could barely see Neji standing stiffly next to a woman in a labcoat, her hand reaching towards the tail that Neji had wrapped protectively around his legs. "He'd need an X-ray to check for it. And if the needle tip is still there, it'll have to be extracted with surgery. I'll be knocked out with some anesthetic for who knows how long, and there's just no time for all of that."

Was she trying to get out of doing it? Why? "You really think that's wise? Just leave a metal shard stuck in your neck? It could be embedding itself into your tissue right now. They may have to do more to get it out the longer you try to postpone it. They might have to rip tendons, snap cartilage…" I trailed off because I had only a sadly vague idea of what I was talking about. All I know, I learned from the words of Gregory House.

Gazing at the same patch of wall I'd been gazing at before, the eight-year-old considered my half-assed argument. Hopefully she was seeing some sense in it. She gave an answer a moment later: "I'll see if Zetsu's stable first…then see if some surgeon has a good gap of time tonight. If it's done, it had better be tonight. Tomorrow morning people are going to be coming in here screaming to see me and the other eight and god knows what I'll have to do to calm them down." The hand that had been idly coming through her hair slowed as she realized that what she'd just said emphasized my previous point.

"I'd ask you to help if it wasn't pointless," she murmured apologetically. "The stitch marks on your skin are eye-catching but so are these." She flicked one wing so quickly I jumped in my seat, thinking she was going to extend it right here in the hall. "If I flap a couple times I'll have people crawling over each other to see me…which reminds me I need to brief the others on rabid crowds. Remind them not to bite any hands that—" she stopped and turned suddenly and I followed her eyes.

The tall experiment with black hair was standing just outside the doorway just four doors down from us. I hadn't heard him make any noise, but perhaps that's preferable. If he made noise I'd be prompted to look at him. I might look at his eyes. I did once, and felt physical pain. That one has...aggressive x-ray vision or something, and just being near him is disquieting. Sakura seems to think so, too.

Muttering something I couldn't hear, Sakura stood up and stretched, allowing for an uninterrupted view of her torso (damn), and since I had nothing else of particular grandiose significance to say, I said flatly, "Goddamn. You need to eat more."

"Only two weeks after meeting me, _now _you notice. Excuse my metabolism, sir, but all the snackfoods I've ingested recently haven't done much for my weight gain. Especially since I ate most of it while flying or running."

"Hospitals have cafeterias. It's usuallay cheap crap, but it's food."

"Get me something whenever you go down there, then. Something with meat in it. But now I have to go see Zetsu. I have medical conditions to clarify."

I scoffed without meaning to as she left: she had medical conditions to clarify. She did, alone. As usual.

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January 24th, 6:35 PM, so says the rectangular clock in room 336. …Sakura POV

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Room 336 was like any other room in this Portland hospital, and probably like any other room in a hospital in Seattle or Phoenix or anywhere, I assumed. There was the bed with wheels on it (in case somebody needs to be go-carted "to the OR, STAT!") and those buttons on it that could make it move and be more comfortable. There was one window with a scenic view of the congested parking lot and some buildings and a park beyond. A clock, an aged television, a door in the corner to a bathroom, and medical supplies hanging in a neat rack by the sink. It was an average hospital room, except for the patient inside, and his visitors. None of them human.

Inside me was the usual feeling of wariness of my personal nightmares sitting in one twelve-by-fifteen space. I felt compelled to peek my head in first before actually coming in. I even combed my fingers through my hair first, so if any nurse was inside performing a test on Zetsu, she wouldn't see a girl with wings _and _the hair of a wild forest pixie. I did that all calm and cool even while Itachi watched me come in, no chills or freak-outs at all, (so where's my award?). He told me, "I was able to make the nurse understand I wished to know his heart rate. And she said it was only slightly above average…for a young man."

"You didn't give his actual age, did you?"

"..."

"Itachi...there's no point to tell her that. His body doesn't seem to be thirteen years old, and didn't develop as slowly as a thirteen-year-old human's, so-"

"I didn't tell her that. I did consider, but did not in the end."

"Good. I want to save the complications for when there are no—few problems."

"There will be problems for a long time," Itachi said. He was so very right I wanted to bow my head in respect. He moved his eyes to what I thought was the heart monitor. It displayed two numbers and I felt a little ashamed at not being able to know if those two numbers translated into good news. But then again, why the hell should I pity myself for not knowing telemetry at eight years of age? "Karin is the one who let those four creatures loose. There must be hundreds like them. She'll have them kill defenseless people and fingers shall point immediately to us."

I set a hand on the edge of Zetsu's bed, trying to feign casualness and relaxation, and watched my two-toned companion breathe. "Which is why we should make a good impression on people as soon as possible, and not be irritated when they get cra—"

"Which is why you are refusing to sleep?"

"Refusing to sleep?" I repeated, a bit startled. "It may or may not have slipped your notice, but I grew up not sleeping very much. I'm all right."

"I had thought you would be up the entire night waiting for someone to interview you." And as he said that I realized what a damn good idea it was. I _should_ probably be standing by the front desk right now, tapping my foot and waiting for that bitch from US Weekly to come back with a cameraman sidekick. If I was there and ready, I would be the first one she would see. I would be the first source of information, and _no _rumor or witness or other fuckup experiment would attempt to tell her what's what here.

So I told him that idea hadn't crossed my mind yet (look at me, admitting I'm dumb), and I _had _slept a bit recently (proving I'm dumb again) and I even said the idea was good. It's like my pride is just being carved out with a spork and served on a dinner plate.

"You won't be the one to watch for them." The lack of force in that statement didn't surprise me; this was Itachi. "Tell your undead friends to watch for reporters if you must." By undead, he meant the cousins. Because Hidan's hair was silvery and Kakuzu's skin was corpse-dark, he thought they looked too old to be alive. Or so I tried to guess. "You'll be sleeping through the night."

This guy is not going to tell me what to do. The precept of respecting one's elders did not apply here; I made my tone only menially sarcastic only because I respected Itachi's (false) consideration for me: "I'm not ill-prepared to handle an interview. If I must stay up all night waiting—"

"You'll be sleeping in a hospital bed next door, recovering from surgery." muttered Deidara from his place by the window he stared out of. "Itachi told one of the doctors about the needle in your neck. They're going to take it out, mm." There were a lot of things I could have said and done to that. I could have picked up the television remote and flung it at his head, walked over and smacked him upside the head, or written a four-page list of list of reasons that this decision was a mistake and crammed the papers into his mouth.

Did they even know what surgery entailed? What kind of surgery it would be? How long it would take? Whether or not the one performing it was experienced? What if there was nothing there and the needle had already dissolved? Why didn't I get a freakin' X-ray beforehand?

But no, none of those questions came to mind. "How did you tell that to him if he can't understand your speech?"

"He wrote it, hm."

"He _what?"_

"You, Zetsu and Neji were gone for days." That devious prick put some genuine-sounding anxiety in his words at the memory of that week. "Sasori passed the time in that house by trying to learn how to write. He used the big, dark guy's computer and now he can do badass Victorian cursive, mm. And he taught Itachi."

Never mind that Itachi had learned cursive, second-hand and in one week, so fine and even a regular person could read it! Mind the fact that he and Sasori can now use that to communicate to every living person who knows how to read!

I'm no longer the main source of information for the public. Sasori and Itachi can say I have a contagious form of cancer and people might believe it!

"Excuse me, is the gentleman with the ponytail…" The four of us in that room and turned to a shaking, wide-eyed nurse. This was the blonde one who had been worshipping Kakashi and Neji right next to me before. Thank god she seemed more controlled now. "Ah, black ponytail, I mean. I brought a clipboard and blank paper for you. Well, you can tell me, I suppose, but, ah," her face turned redder, "I just want to see your lovely handwriting again…Itachi?" He nodded confirmation of his name.

"What is it you want me to write?" Itachi asked completely pointlessly.

"What I want for you to write down for me," the nurse said, which would fool some people into thinking she'd actually understood what he said, "is a list of allergies and immunities…actually, any medical fact we should know about yourself and your friends. We've already found that sunlight makes Zetsu here breathe more easily. Is he, um, part lizard? One of those species that likes to sun itself on a rock sometimes?"

(Seriously? "Is he part lizard?" American education system, where art thou?) The weasel experiment shook his head and scribbled down a note on the paper and showed it to the nurse. I sidestepped to the nurse to see the clipboard and my jaw nearly dropped when I saw the curving, swinging, altogether perfect cursive writing. Aside from the whole beauty of it, he'd written, "Fifty percent or more Venus fly trap".

"He's a _plant?_" the nurse all but screamed, geez. A kid walking outside jumped at the noise. It was the black boy I'd talked to downstairs, so thank goodness it wasn't a newbie who would start screaming at the sight of us. Itachi took the clipboard back and wrote something else below his first line. It took awhile, and during that time Kisame, who had been sitting sleepily in one of the visitor chairs, stood up and left the room, calling Neji's name. He reached over and stroked my arm on his way out. Okay. Fine. Fine.

"Photosynthesis?" the nurse said incredulously. "Maybe. I thought Venus fly traps were plants that ate bugs. Why would they need photosynthesis?"

"Do they undergo it?" Itachi asked me. I muttered something like, "Yes, sometimes," because I wasn't entirely sure. If the Venus fly trap was a plant, containing chloroplasts, which would naturally perform photosynthesis. But all you ever hear of Venus fly traps is there crazy ability to eat insects. I felt somewhat awkward and...unreliable, not knowing the real answer.

"Well, maybe that's why he was breathing easier before the sun set. The blinds were open—oh, they still are. Can he still eat…eat, mm…human food?"

From Deidara's position at the window there came an amused laugh. "Of course he can. When that guy eats ribs, he eats the bones, too." I had a clear memory of the nine of us killing time and relaxing at the cousins' house, and me seeing Zetsu among a little group of males playing with the microwave and a plastic bag of meat.

"I assume that means yes?" She was blushing, probably because that memory made Deidara smile, and she assumed the smile was for her question only, and...so she's charmed by the unknowing actions of this birdman? Girl, inter-species romance will not work. I will cut off my wing and bet it that you being attracted to Deidara will go nowhere. And I'd bet the other one that such an idea would send creeped-out chills through many a normal person. At least, if they could overlook the natural attractiveness of the experiments, which was part of their makeup to lower the guard of prey, which was a surprisingly real biological phenomenon. What was I thinking about before this? Deidara?

"Oh, well, finish that list whenever you can. I told one of the interns to get you all something from the cafeteria, I hope you haven't eaten anything recently. And in the meantime I'll take little pink here to get ready for her surgery." Baroness Chatterbox made as if to grab me. I wanted to step back, but didn't, and flinched only a little when she started pulling me out.

"This is being done soon? It needs preparation?"

"In fifteen minutes, dear. Dr. Elliot's going to perform it on his break; he's such a nice man! He knows the procedure front to back! Apparently it's really similar to this construction accident that keeps happening around here."

Interesting how my temporary vocal sacrifice looks like a construction accident. I wonder what kind of accident befell those workers. We were out of the room by now and I shot a glance back at Itachi to convey a message. I conveyed "How could you do this to me?" and "I'm scared of medical tools!"and "fuck you!" all in one look. The look I got back was close to a smile and then suddenly he was out of sight. Good effing riddance. The scuffling noise of shoes against a hard floor made me remember that Kakuzu had been sitting just outside that room. He looked rather shocked as I yelled out to him that the needle was being extracted practically right now. He didn't follow us and I wished he had.

We turned the corner and the nurse began to hum. Her constant air of cheer amongst mutants was beginning to feel disquieting. "What do I need to do for the preparation?" I said slowly, memories of other surgeries rising.

"Oh, just take a shower," she said. That...was surprising. "And don't eat anything, of course."To keep my throat free of food particles, sure. Kakuzu won't be happy to hear that. "And after the shower, we'll supply you with new clothes. I mean, when was the last time you washed that top? Don't worry, I'll get you something cuter than a floppy hospital gown, Sakura." Now she's starting to talk to me like I'm one of her girlfriends over for a sleepover. Is she going to give me makeup, too? "Right here. 361 is empty right now and the shower in its bathroom was cleaned just this morning." She led me into the room, into its conjoined bathroom—I noticed the toilet with a little red thread near the toilet paper roll, reading "pull for help"—and pulled back the thin shower curtain. The plain and nearly-empty shower didn't interest me. The nearly see-through curtain did.

"Are you wearing a bra right now?" she asked, and _hell _if that wasn't uncomfortable as...ugh. Thank goodness we're alone. I told her yes. Would she also be interested to know it's Chambers brand? Okay...she's a nurse, she has to deal with naked people more than the average person. Just cool it.

"It is a sports bra or a regular clasp?"

Stop talking to me about bras! "Regular.?"

"Color?"

The _hell_! "White."

"There's shampoo in that corner, and we prefer that you'd use it. It'll kill any remaining germs clinging in your hair. I'll knock on the bathroom door when I'm back with your new clothes!" Good riddance! Get out and ask other people about their undergarments! Oh, just before you get the hell out of here: "Ma'am, you didn't tell anyone I'm showering in here, did you?" I mean...well, when we shared the cousins' house last week, I had this worry, and it came right back: I had no idea if any of the male experiments, amongst their other violent and horrid desires, would be compelled to drop in on me showering. Pleasant and escapist as a good shower is, it's also a time when you're very vulnerable.

"Any of those boys with you, you mean? I told that brunette guy with the ponytail. I mean, just bebcause he was passing by me a minute ago and I know he came in with you." She blinked once and pointed a finger slightly upward. She looked like a blonde in the midst of a great discover. "Ohh. You mean your animal-boy-friends?" Thankfully she put some space in between "boy" and "friends." Not thankfully, her face darkened and her lips lifted up sneakily. "Oh, wait, are they actually your...boyfriends?"

Bitch, you did not just call them my harem. I will punch you. "No, they're not. They're my friends." Ugh! Lies taste so foul. "But please don't tell them I'm in here. Please."

Being polite seemed to work. Her expression changed to one of genuine honesty. "Okay. I promise. I'll even lock the door for you and I'll keep the key with me. Now you get stripping, honey." Yeah. Okay. Leave. When she did, I was close to ecstatic, and then covered head to toe with shivers. I wonder how that woman's job interview played out, or what her superiors think of her. Maybe aside from a few off-putting comments (at least off-putting to me) she's a grade-A nurse.

Anyhow. Now I got to take a nice shower, all alone. When I turned the knob, the water was cool at first, in sharp contrast to the cousins' shower which was nice and hot almost instantly. I found a comfortably warm temperature that felt good on my skin. I switched it between warm and cool several times (I like cool and cold things! but I like warm showers! But I like cool and cold things! And also warm showers! What do I do?) But I also had the pleasure of applying shampoo on my own hair, instead of Karin or Anko doing it for me. I've only done it myself a dozen times at best, and it's great. No nails scratching my head or getting the stuff in my eyes. This shampoo, for cheap hospital brand, made my whole head feel fresh and tingly. I even tried to put it on my wings to clean them, too, since plain water was only doing so much for them. Mixed results, felt weird. Nice, clean wings, though! Excellent. The nurse suddenly knocked, and I heard her key turning. Oh God.

"I'll hand you a towel first and then the clothes, all right?" She said this while handing the nondescript towel. I took it quickly and dried myself, my hair and my wings as best I could. I handed her back a really damp towel and in return got some undergarments. They definitely were not hospital standard. Either she had gone shopping in the ten minutes I was in here, or...

"I sometimes use the laundry room in the basement to do my own clothes, and sometimes I'll even bring my daughters, so lucky for you we've got practically a matching size for you!" What an intriguing and possibly illegal story. "My daughter has probably a hundred different outfits, and I doubt she'll miss just one, so you can keep those."

The undergarments were definitely clean; even my near-dead sense of smell could pick up the lavender-or-maybe-fresh-spring-breeze detergent. They were both simple, black things and I think I liked them. I put these on and held my hand out of the curtain for the other, main pieces.

Mrs. Nameless Nurse handed me an outfit that definitely wouldn't be missed by her clothes queen daughter. She gave me some pale blue...jeans, I think, and the stitching on the pockets suggested they were stylish. But are they still jeans if they only go three-quarters of the way down your legs? There's a word for these kinds of pants and it starts with a C, but the world hates Sakura so I can't think of the answer now. There was also a white shirt (to go with my black bra? Really?) but at least it seemed thicker than my own shirt and long-sleeved, and _that _was a notable change for me. I've always been able to look at my own arms but now I can't. But, hey...hey, look at this...

"You already cut holes in the back for my wings?"

"Sure! It wasn't that hard. I know the left is a little bigger than the right, so sorry."

"It's fine! It's more than fine! Let me...get it all the way through..." Her guess on the proper size for the holes was just shy of perfect. Or maybe it _was _perfect and I'm too stupid to recognize it. Either way, Awkward Nurse has just re-earned some of my respect. Looking at myself in the mirror, looking like this, was...astounding. I love it. I love these clothes. "It's wonderful. These things fit great. Miss, this is horribly late, but what's your name, so I can thank you properly?"

"I'm Shizune," she said happily, like she didn't usually get the opportunity to say that. "But I'm not really blonde. Or quite this happy. I lost a bet with my supervisor here, and so I have to walk around with dyed hair and drink this new kind of foreign coffee—" I stepped out of the shower, fully dressed and with damp hair and feathers, and she shut right up. Probably stunned at me wearing normal girls' clothes. I was, too.

Nurse Shizune sighed dreamily. "Looks _great. _I think your hair and wings are dry enough already, so come out and wait by the door, 'kay? Carly is coming up the hall right now with a wheelchair for you."

"Ma'am, I don't really need a wheelchair. Just take me to the table they'll be using to operate on me and I'll lay down on it myself."

"Honey, the wheelchair is just for relaxation while we take you there. You deserve to sit down some, don't you?"

"I've been sitting down for half an hour talking to my friend…" My sentence got slower and quieter as I came out into the hallway and spotted Deidara standing two doors down and leaning against the wall.

Like all the other male experiments, the heated hospital had encouraged Deidara to take off all but his undermost and tightest shirt, _of course_. His was greyish instead of the more typical black and he'd rolled his sleeves up a bit. Even his hair, or the usual fraction of it, was up in a newer and neater ponytail. He looked refreshed and this bothered me. If he's refreshed, he's more up to hunting me down and slitting my throat? If he's refreshed, he'll feel more comfortable talking to people? I can't exactly identify my problem with this, but I hope to God he doesn't notice me over here. But he's coming over here.

"Smelled you," he grinned, looking my new outfit up and down. Fortunately the woman named Carly came up the hall just then pushing the wheelchair, keeping me from awkwardly gazing at Deidara.

It was like any regular wheelchair, but I hadn't sat in one since I was two and had gone unconscious after not receiving my daily food pill and needed to be taken to one of the Medical Examining Rooms, so still felt strange upon getting into it. I plopped myself down onto the black, leathery seat and tried to shift my wings up and over the back side of the chair. It was difficult and I saved myself embarrassment by just keeping them where they were, between the armrests like the rest of me and slightly squeezed. The lady called Carly, who was tall for a female, put down some metal disks off the edge of the wheelchair that I hadn't observed before. Once put down they were adequate footrests. I used them happily.

"Now we just need to find Dr. Elliot," Carly said. Her eyes stayed on Deidara the entire time, I could see as Shizune was pushing me, but she spoke calmly and surely. "He should be, ah! Lorenzo!" She and Shizune both walked swiftly forward to a big circular desk placed in the intersection of four hallways. Sitting inside it and typing away on a computer was a dark-skinned and probably Hispanic man in his thirties. Carly asked him several questions, but Lorenzo did nothing but clench his jaw and type. Like Lorenzo, I kept my jaw clenched. There was an experiment standing next to me, no one behind me, no one looking my way, and I was sitting. Eight years of practice kept me calm.

"So, you scared?"

'_Of you?' _"Of surgery?"

"Yeah. It's not like any of us like it, mm…no one does, actually. You want me to stand by you while they do it?"

Oh, how cute, he was trying to soothe my fear of all things sharp and surgical. I wonder if that's a test of how far convinced I am of their charade. Well let me tell/think you something, blondie, you and your friends could earn Emmys for your acting talents but you're not getting through to me! And please allow me the pleasure of trying out my own acting skills: let's see if I can make you believe I actually want you in an enclosed space with my throat torn open for you.

"You're probably not allowed in. Sterile environment, masks and gloves required and all that." I murmured. "Anyway I don't think you really want to be in there looking at my exposed flesh." For the next few seconds, my ears were tuned like sonar to pick up the faintest signal of sound.

There was no quiet, ironic laughter at me saying exactly what he wanted.

There was a rustle of hair moving over his shoulder as he looked down at me, but I didn't meet the gaze. "I'm gonna stand outside the door whether you want me to or not," he said carelessly. I could picture a snooty or maybe aloof expression on his face but didn't look. "These people are better characters than Kabuto but they might not be as skilled, mm."

"Are you gonna let them know if they cut the wrong tube?" I muttered.

"Nah. I just wanna see you." He said that with such simple and…non-affectionate…simplicity that I couldn't think of anything to say.

"Ah, um, excuse me! Bird-man!" Together we looked up and saw Carly and Lorenzo gesturing Deidara over. Since I was looking up now I was able to see him give me a questioning look before going over to them with Shizune. I couldn't imagine what they could want with him, seeing as he couldn't write like Itachi and his reading skills were elementary at best so he could hardly communicate. All the same I sighed in relief at being left alone again and chilled out in my wheelchair while I had the chance.

As you can expect, my chilling time was interrupted. While the two hospital folk were talking to Deidara, a man with a receding, blonde hairline walked by, tapping his finger on what looked like a pager. He turned the corner around them and headed down the hallway, towards Zetsu's room and towards the elevator. While this man walked past—Dr. Elliot, his nametag had said—I wondered if he was going to Zetsu's room to look for me, me being his next patient, but seconds later I heard the faint dinging sound that could only be the elevator. A fresh idea popped into my mind. I set my hands on the wheelchair's wheels and locked my eyes on Deidara's back. He was looking at a paper in his hand while Carly and Lorenzo stared anxiously at him. I took the opportunity to hold by breath and sneak past.

Once I had turned the corner I took in another slow and deep breath and did not look into Zetsu's room when I wheeled by. If Itachi was still there and if Kisame had come back, they didn't come out to ask where I was going. Maybe they hadn't thought it was me going by, seeing as they wouldn't guess a wheelchair signified the approach of perfectly-able-to-walk Sakura. Then again, their senses of smell are better than mine so any second now someone could grab my shoulder and…ah. Here's the elevator. The bench that I had sat on with Kakuzu for half an hour was right next to it but he wasn't. As I pressed the button to go down to the first floor I mused that he had gone to the cafeteria after all. Maybe after the surgery I'd find him in the waiting room with…with…what kind of food did hospitals have?

The door dinged and opened and I wheeled myself purposefully in and pressed—oh god that would be so fun to just press everything and see where I went!—the first one after a moment's thought. I knew the door would take a second or two to close, so I stuck my head out the threshold to make sure I wasn't being followed. I was.

Walking swiftly up the hall with bristled wings and a most unpleasant frown was Deidara. My face contorted into a freaked, estranged smile and I popped my head back between the doors just in time. They closed before Deidara could make it in.

I giggled on the trip down, despite the depressingly ugly and soft music surrounding me. Had Deidara been too surprised at leaving me for thirty seconds and finding me gone to use any real speed? I knew he could have made it through into the elevator if he had really tried. I giggled also in happiness at the little, lonely space. I felt just that: little and safe.

Alas, times of happiness have to end, so the elevator doors opened. I wheeled myself out and hoped Dr. Elliot had come to this floor and not the second one. I did have to have a word with him before my surgery, after all, to give him the specifics of my situation. I can't have a doctor operating on me, possibly doing the wrong surgery if I didn't talk to him beforehand, with just "she's got a needle in her neck" as a guideline. So I wheeled myself around the halls on that floor looking for the blonde man with a pager. One young woman passing by me, with her arm in a cast, had a candy bar in her mouth and dropped it when she turned the corner and saw me. I gave her a wry smile and said, "Evening!" before going on my way.

Thank goodness Dr. Elliot came into sight then. He was standing by himself in the middle of a hall, still tapping on his pager and muttering to himself. I thought he looked like a very reliable man with his blue scrubs and steady, smooth way of texting on his pager. I felt a little better as I moved myself towards him. I called, "Dr. Elliot! Excuse me, Dr. Elliot!" He turned around, saw me and jumped, literally jumped. So much for steady and reliable.

"You are the Dr. Elliot who'll be removing the needle tip from my neck, right?"

"That's me, miss." he said in a strangled voice.

"I'm not gonna bite you. My canines aren't that pronounced," I tried to smile lightly. "I thought I should give you a more detailed description of the problem so you know what to do. Personally I don't want you to tear into my throat, think I have so much bird DNA in me that my larynx is actually a gizzard, which it isn't, that's nearer to my ribs—'scuse me, I'm down here." Well, if he stares over people's heads and doesn't take surprises that well, he may not be the ideal doctor for my surgery! But even as I thought this I knew I was fooling myself. I knew Deidara was behind me.

"He doesn't bite, either." I lied and hoped his palms weren't showing. "Uh…how about, when I'm done talking to him, I'll go back up to the third floor? I'll wait for you or Shizune to find me."

"You're damned right you will, yeah." I really hoped the doctor couldn't understand Deidara right now. It would make a bad impression. The doctor walked off wordlessly, with only a small nod and awkward smile. I was left alone with Deidara again. My body wanted to shake but I kept it still and put my hands on the wheels so I could turn around and actually look at him. There was a little bang on the metal below my feet somewhere. Whatever part of the chair he'd kicked or still had his foot on wouldn't let me move the chair. I had the grace not to just cheekily stand up and move.

"I just wanted to give the doctor a real description of the problem— " I started out fine, with a fully understandable and reasonable argument and no reason to feel I'd done something bad.

"You have to get off this habit, hm." Habit, he said! Like that word would make me apologize?

"Habit of what?"

"Of making everyone wonder where the hell you went this time."

The extensiveness "this time" implied was sort of true, but since I was sitting and my back was to him, I still rolled my eyes at this. I spotted a patient at the end of the hallway, chatting with someone who was barely out of sight. I felt a smidge safer with something like a witness nearby, so bravely said, "I had a reason every 'this time' and I'll have a reason every 'this time' that comes by in the future. I always know what I'm doing." I added, mostly truthfully and very brazenly at the end.

"Hmph." He removed his foot and started pushing the chair back towards the elevator. A man in red scrubs who walked by gave a really exaggerated gasp when he saw us two winged creatures in the hall. It was a seemingly long and terribly awkward elevator ride. It made my last, lone one seem heavenly and very far away. We were almost back to Carly, Shizune and Lorenzo at the intersection of hallways when Deidara spoke again. "You know it wouldn't surprise me if you woke up in the middle of the operation, knocked out the doctors and flew out the window, yeah."

"Surgical rooms don't have windows." I was humoring him, so it didn't matter if that was true or not. "I'd have to use the door, so you'd see me."

From behind me came the unfortunately-familiar of a purr that was much too deep to be a cat's. Shizune's face brightened when she looked in our direction and saw us both perfectly fine and uninjured. "Oh, Sakura, he found you! Look, you two, I told you he'd find her." At the word "found" Deidara's purring turned up a volume notch and his hand made its wretched way to my face.

"Will you—quiet! They're bonding, give them a moment!"

_Bonding? _How did these women become registered nurses with words like _bonding _in their vocabularies? I sharply pulled from Deidara's hand but he shoved his fingers into my hair instead, probably knowing I'd be hurting myself if I tried to disentangled him from that. I glanced at Lorenzo and the two women, made sure they were caught up in their laughter, and swiftly turned in my chair to face Deidara. It was an awkward move and it made a joint in my back crack and my wings turn to painful angles but I didn't care. I gave the bird dude the most meaningful and unsociable (yet civil!) snarl I could manage before turning back. He tangled his hand further and pushed the chair to follow the grinning Carly. I almost gritted my teeth, when I swore I felt one of his tongues on my head.

I dropped my voice to a volume I hoped the humans around us couldn't detect. "You got some nerve."

"You're fun to play with, mm. Aack!" For a second I thought the last part was an exclamation of happiness, but I had the sense to turn around and see who had just smacked him. I spotted Sasori, leaning casually halfway out of one of the rooms we'd just passed. How the hell I hadn't seen him while him and his room were in front of me shall never be known.

"This is healing time, not molesting time, Deidara."

"Fuck off, Scorpy." I felt his hand in my hair again and my face twisted up of its own accord.

I saw Sasori narrow his eyes but he ducked back into his room and didn't follow us. It made me wonder where the hell everyone else went. They probably weren't visiting random patients and they all couldn't be using the bathroom at the same time, and that went for Hidan and Lee and Gai, too…I kept trying to think of things to distract myself from everything: my impending, vulnerable state of unconsciousness, the people who would be calling me everything from freak to angel by noon tomorrow, the savage failed experiments that Karin would soon be releasing, the unknown whereabouts and intentions of Kabuto. I felt Deidara's hand move again, lower towards my neck probably in an attempt to soothe me tensed body. I think he knew how much he failed at doing so but by then Carly had opened a door in front of us. I stood up the moment Deidara halted my chair.

Well, apparently, I'd been right. This room which contained a very foreboding table on which I would soon lay contained no windows. Dr. Elliot stood in the corner, writing something on a chart attached to the wall. "Carly, the anesthetic, please." he said briskly. "Sakura, if you would get up onto the table…" I did so quickly. The thin paper atop it rustled as I positioned myself, sitting up. Since it was a table for an average person I knew my wings would hang uncomfortably off the edges when I lay down. But it's not like I'm one to complain.

I looked at Deidara blankly and hoped he would understand he had to leave the room like, now. He stared for a second or so and then walked forward. He set both hands on the edge of the table, leaned forward and whispered, "Relax," into my ear. I was glad he left out a certain pet name I did not like. He left the room leaving me very un-relaxed and closed the double doors behind him—both of which of course had a pretty large and redundant square window in it. I saw Deidara through it, looking at someone or something I couldn't see. I looked down so I would not appear wide-eyed and afraid, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Hidan through the left window. His eyes were wider than mine ever could have been; I could tell that with peripheral vision alone. The poor guy hadn't been told about the operation or about the piece of metal in my neck.

"Can you tell me your height and weight?" Dr. Elliot said flatly and professionally. I answered him with equal professionalism, "Five feet, five inches and at least eighty-four pounds." The weight I honestly wasn't sure of. I had probably gained something from all the junk Hidan and Kakuzu had stored in their fridge. I told him I wasn't allergic to anything, and when he asked if I'd ever had any kind of surgery before, I told him "dozens," and realized I should not have made myself look so medically dependent.

"Hold our your arm, please," Carly said, and I did. I winced when they dabbed my arm with alcohol, but not when the needle was inserted under my skin. I looked around at the cabinets and charts placed neatly on the walls, and the contents of one opened cabinet. Dr. Elliot was loading some of these onto a little dresser-thing with wheels underneath. He rolled this over to me and lifted a little bottle. "Now lay down," I think Carly said. I was feeling dizzy, not sleepy. Anyone could stay awake through dizziness.

"This is the most mild sedative we have." Dr. Elliot said. "Tell us if it's too strong for you and we'll cancel out some of—"

"Actually, it's nowhere near powerful enough." I laughed. "The scientists used Charge 350 as a sedative for me." Predictably, he sputtered. A few cc's of that well-known, distributed-by-Chambers-only product could be used to knock out large mammals. And by that I mean Clydesdale-size and up. Dr. Elliot promptly stuck a larger, fuller needle in me and only then did I even start to feel tired. I closed my eyes anyway and tapped my finger on the table ever few seconds to show I was awake. With a sense of hearing no human could have, I faintly picked up Sasori's worried rumbling, and could practically feel Deidara and Hidan right beside him. I hoped Hidan would not make them angry in any way. My finger tapping slowed as a third needle was injected into my other arm.

Only now did I let myself think about what Kakuzu had said to me, how true it was, how scared it made me, and how nothing could be done about it.

666

January 24th, 7:13 PM …Carly POV

666

The girl did not really need to tell us anything specific about the injury in her neck, I think. There was a needle fragment stuck in or very near her larynx, and that was really all that was needed. That was all Dr. Elliot needed, anyhow. I'm just an intern, still in school and failing one class, so I'm probably not the best one to talk of Sakura's surgery except to say that yes, there was one tiny, almost-dissolved fragment and it was safely taken out. How it became dissolved and did not give her some sort of lead poisoning is unknown. Some famous biologist will probably come see her when she is famous and study her internal anatomy. Or maybe there are still files about her and her friends in that laboratory out in Tillamook with valuable information on them.

Right now, all that matters is that she get a good sleep. After her neck had been stitched up, so tightly and perfectly the stitches were not noticeable, I think, Dr. Elliot and I lifted the sleeping girl between us—lord, eighty-five pounds, she hardly weighed anything!—and set her in the chair so that she could be transported to a bed. I opened the door and let in the other experiments who had been watching through the two windows in the doors.

I can't say which one mesmerized me more: the blonde one with _wings _or the redhead with a _tail. _They were both breathtakingly handsome and were I not already in a steady relationship with my lovely Garrett, I would have been drooling all over them like Shizune Hokage and Erica Thompson.

The two men, and a (human) college boy with silvery hair, a few years younger than me, came swiftly in. I noticed a blonde teenager standing near the doorway and recognized her as one of the three siblings whose abusive father had died in a car crash. She sped away as soon as I looked at her but I was glad to be looking at the strange inhuman creatures again. Even if I couldn't think of them romantically, it was nice to admire beautiful people! Dr. Elliot, bless his panicky heart, had left the room the moment the experiments had filed in.

The redhead was crouching down and inspecting her neck. Maybe he had super-powered vision and could see the near-invisible stitches. The college boy bent down too and felt her neck up and down. He might have touched the hem of her white, long-sleeved shirt, too. I was too busy giggling at the blonde and the redhead. The glares they gave him for touching her were so seething and furious that I truly should not have been laughing. The boy stood up and watched while the redhead—oh, can you say prince charming?—gathered her up in his arms and faced me. The blonde held up a clipboard I hadn't noticed he held. Written on it were the words, "Where is an available bed?" in beautiful handwriting. Now, that was amazing! They had already guessed she would need some place to sleep and had a message written out to ask where it was. They were much smarter than I first thought when I saw the big fishy fellow lumbering around in the halls.

"Go out the door and right," I said in a voice that shook only a little, "And take the next right turn. In that hall, room 366 is completely empty. And near your green friend, too!" I added, hoping that made it sound more attractive. It must have. The blonde's mouth pricked up a bit and he purred something cheerily to the redhead.

Said redhead stood up with Sakura sleeping in his arms. One of her wings was squooshed against his chest and the other hung slightly over his arm, but still curled up like a little wolf cub, and if Sakura's face didn't also look like a sleeping baby animal then I work for the New York Police Department. The blonde gave a little bow to me as a substitute for a "thank you" and the two of them walked off, both gazing fondly at what the redhead held.

Still the college boy with the funny hair stayed in the room. His hands were in his pockets and his mouth slightly open. "Fuckin' bastards. They looked like rapists just now."

I could not help but stare at him rudely. "What are you talking about? What they're doing is incredibly caring." Goodness knows my next statement made me sound like a stereotypical woman: "I think it looks like they're taking care of their baby." The boy frowned and glared but didn't say anything.

"Well, they obviously care very much for her," I said a little snappishly. "And if you happen to be jealous, the best thing would be to go and say that to Sakura the moment she wakes up."

"Jealous?" he all but yelled. "Jealous, I'm worried they'll tear her goddamned throat out!"

Was he on a medication? "Tear her—I don't—"

"You obviously didn't hear what she's spent her life doing before meeting real people," he spat, clenching both fists. "Those guys, all eight of them, the science-shit-people would stick her a room with one of those eight and watch while he ran after her and tried to claw her fuckin' wings off. It's like the first thing she ever said to me."

"Well—well—maybe they've changed!" The boy scoffed and glared and strode angrily for the door. He was probably going to go and mouth off to the two animal-men carrying the girl called Sakura. I went out the door after him and shouted down the hall, "If you say anything to those men, I'll have you arrested!" Halfway down the hall he turned around and shouted, "For what?" and I eagerly called back, "For disturbing a hospital patient! You'll get a week in prison if not a month!" A week or a month ought to be enough time for Sakura to realize she was gravely mistaken in her opinion of the…of her…of her caretakers.

"Fuck you, _Carly_!" he screamed hoarsely. I covered my ears at the volume and cringed as a co-worker standing at the other end of the hall stared accusingly at the boy and then at me. Well, it didn't matter if a few people gave me funny looks. That boy was obviously wrong and so was Sakura. I hoped they would both understand that soon.

666

Yes, I did actually make Shizune a flighty and happy blonde. I just wanted to give a name to the "fawning, happy nurse" and Shizune came to mind, so I gave a brief explanation for the hair color (dyed because of a bet) and left it at that. I don't know if surgery rooms are forbidden to have windows, but I've seen a lack of them in every surgical room, real-life and televised, so wrote it down. Also I'm glad I finally gave Sakura an outfit change, even if her new pants don't cover all of her legs. Much as she likes the cold, she can't run around in the snow with shorts and no shoes. How did she not get frostbite that entire time? Really, you're asking that? If three thousand volts can't kill Sakura, twenty degrees and a cold breeze can't either.

I realize there was little "action" in this chapter, but it was a good place to put in the bit of Sakura's lonely leadership, how she secretly wishes for help but is afraid to accept any. Who do _you _think will help her? (And wasn't it funny to have a POV from a completely random character you'll probably never see again?)

And of course there's that little scene where wheelchair-bound Sakura sneaks onto an elevator and barely escapes a rather pissed Deidara. I really like that part.

Ta…Storm


	25. Twentyfifth

**EDIT, Christmas Eve, 2012: Here it is. The last edit. After this, an update is coming. I know you've waited so long. **

**Almost there. **

**The Last Edit here isn't finished; I've edited UP UNTIL The point where you see the phrase "edithere" stuck into the text. I hope for the rest to be done by New Year's Day. We'll see.  
**

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I'm expecting this to end in five-ish chapters, by the way, if not four. (Followed by an epilogue that will have no point but fanservice and amusement, subjects which mostly make me grind my teeth in frustration and disappointment, but can make me struggle to hold in a squee of utter joy, depending on the day.)

66

January…25th? Too early for me to be walking around. …Naruto POV

66

People at Chambers said sometimes that hospitals work around the clock, which means all the time, and I didn't believe them because people need to sleep and they have to let their employees sleep, or else I don't even know how they're doing it. But they _do _work around the clock, just by switching people out. That never even occurred to me. So...so I'm dumb, I guess. What else is new. The point is, the people at this hospital work around the clock, too. It's not even dawn, and there are still just as many nurses around as when we first came in here. They're leaving us alone for now, though.

Three of my friends had to sleep in the room right next door, because there's just not enough room for nine people in one room so that's too bad. Anyway, most of us are gonna be on the floor or something since there's only one bed and one chair in every room. Too bad for them. In this room, some people dragged in a long couch for us, and that's where I got to be with, while everyone else stood or sat on the floor. I get the couch because I've got the little one sleeping in my arms and we're not gonna have her on the floor.

The nurses objected when they saw it earlier, but Neji showed his fangs at one of them a little to make them go away and they did. And I _know _that's bad and Sakura will hate that he acted aggressively to the humans, but their plan had been to put her in an empty room with the security guards outside it. And _that _is a goddamn joke so we wouldn't let them do it. I'll tell her that when she wakes up, but for now, she's with me and everything's good. Her sore neck can get better right here.

The only bad part about this is that I've been hungry for a while. And the hospital food is okay, but I want a TV dinner, the kind with a steak inside. Or the ribs Zetsu made. Deidara suddenly got up and interrupted my food-thoughts. He had to sleep on the stood up and stretched, pulled on his left wing, and walked over to the window. He pulled down a couple blinds with one claw and instantly said, "Whoa, shit."

"Hhuh?" I was still tired, so...I don't know.

"There's people out there. Just standing in the parking lot, a whole bunch of them."

"And how many is a bunch?"

"Gotta be...seventy, eighty. At least." I came a little more awake. From alarm. I remembered this feeling from a whole ton of Chambers tests, like the feeling you might get, if you're lucky, when an automated gun is coming around to point at you. And even that went away when Sakura shifted her legs. Her legs were basically in between my legs, so she kicked me a little bit. Deidara just laughed at her. "Uh, didn't mean to wake you."

"Well, you didn't," she said, blinking a couple times. "I'm still unconscious and in a minute I'm gonna get up and start sleepwalking."

"Who's sleepwalking?" Neji had slept on the opposite end of the couch, sitting upright while Sakura and me were sprawled the long way. My feet were still sort of on his lap but he didn't look like he cared and I didn't, either.

"Looks kinda like those people are." Deidara gestured to the window again. "They're just...standing there. Staring up. Not even waving signs or anything, mm. That's just creepy! What do you think they want?"

"They're probably here for us." I told him.

"No _shit _Naruto, but why? To meet us or shoot us or something else? And why at four forty-five in the morning?"

Neji stood up and shook his head wildly, like a kitty right from Youtube. I'll tell him that later, ahaha.

"We should neaten ourselves…" he stopped to yawn. "and deal with it very soon. I don't think hiding is any answer."

"I don't, either. We ought to go out there and speak to them." I like when she says 'we'. It's my favorite little thing in the world to notice. "After which, I'll advise everyone to stay in their homes, basements if possible. And only that if we can't get a significant amount of people into shelters of some sort. Even local gyms would do. Even..." Sakura sighed. Deidara looked away and stared at his arm or something. My fingers were sort of new the pocket of Sakura's new pants, and I poked the edge of it. Karin was suddenly coming into my head and this made her go away. I scratched the pocket and wondered how much time it would take to talk to those people.

Sakura started to talk again. "There's no telling when Karin will send more of her monsters, or even mercenaries. The sooner we get regular people out of the way, the better. We need space for, for...a conflict." Deidara nodded at this, but moved towards the door as though he meant to leave. But he stopped at Zetsu's bed to stare at him real quick. Sakura got up from my lap, and I moved my tail so it wouldn't be in her way.

She, and sort of Itachi and Sasori, would be the only ones really good talking to people. The rest of us would just wave and maybe shake people's hands. And I hope no one misunderstands me on the first meeting. That would just...not...be cool. I hope I'm lucky.

It took another hour or so for everyone to shower and look nice and have their clothes washed, and even then Sakura was fussing over how everyone looked and the way they stood and things like that. She smoothed Sasori's hair kept a typical neutrality as he purred for her, and made a few creases in Itachi's shirt so he wouldn't look "like a farce" and whacked Deidara with her wing when he kept licking the edges of his canines. She did this as we huddled in and around Zetsu's room, (he still slept) and when we went in two groups to the bottom floor, and when we waited near the lobby. She refused to let us actually go in the lobby, since some people were there and the doors and windows near it would let anyone outside who was close be able to see us. So we waited near the end of this one storage hallway for...for something.

Sakura pulled Sasori away twice, and Kakashi once, to ask them things. I don't know if she expected them to be private; she must know I could hear them well enough, with two ears open or four. She was telling Sasori who she'd be in charge of keeping in line once we got outside, and who he'd be in charge of. What I didn't get was how they were gonna keep anybody in line in front of a billion cameras and not make it all obvious and stuff. And she told Kakashi the routes to run if things didn't go well. No one else got told anything.

We waited and waited and Sakura whispered and fussed. Kisame stayed pacing up and down the hall and the lady at the receptionist's desk, who could alsmot see us, broke out sweating every time he came sort of near. I was kind of sweating, too. And my left fox-ear hurt. I don't even know why, it just did, I think it was nerves or something. I asked Sakura and she said not to worry, and just breathe deep, and I did.

I also wondered what the crowd outside was like now. It was around 6:15 now and I could tell with just a twitch of my ear that the crowd had grown and that they were shuffling around outside. Sometimes cars honked at them, too. I admit it, I got curious and stepped closer to the lobby and even looked out the front doors. I wasn't close enough that they'd open by themselves with that magic thing inside them that makes them do that, so it was probably still okay. I saw camera flashes and _lots _of people and something about the crowd and their eager faces made my ears twitch and a smile appear on my face.

"Get _back_" is what Sakura hissed at me three seconds later, and she pinched her little talons into me and pulled. She pulled ridiculously hard, too, and I almost fell on her. "Naruto, you don't even go near the door unless I tell you to! We're doing this exactly as I say and I mean _exactly. _This, this..." She halted and was probably searching for a word. Kakashi stared at her while she fussed and tapped her foot. "This...ugh...press conference, will shape the rest of our lives. Public feelings on us will be hugely shaped by whatever we say, whatever expressions we make, and yes, Naruto, the way we stand."

"If you say so," I said, and she squinted at me in a way that was totally not positive and chilled me. I would bet some bits of my tail fur fell out from that look. "I mean on the last bit, the standing. Everything else, I get it, Sakura, I do. I know how important this is." I do. I know I'm not...taking charge like she is, but I do understand.

When she left my side again, it was just about when Kisame was coming back from another pace down the hall. He stopped by me and whispered, "What the hell do we do if they throw things at us? What if they yell and throw rocks at us?"

I know I'm no Sakura, no Sasori, but I know very well what our destiny is going to be if the result of this "press conference" turns out to be fear and stone-throwing. Lots of people throughout history have been "stoned", which is the older sense of the word, not the new one that means drugs. To be stoned really means to have rocks thrown at you, like if they think you're a witch or something and your village thinks you need to die. That's being stoned. That could be us and...and that's...that. Sakura wasn't in the vicinity to tell him what to do, so I just said what I would do. "If they do that, we walk back inside. Real slow." Was that an okay answer? Please, please let it be okay.

Let this be okay.

The time's come and I'm scared now. The hospital employees, patients and visitors were all avoiding us now.

Now.

Sakura came back from someplace with vending machine treats for us. I got two candy packages in orange wrappers that I recognized, but I couldn't really read it. The first letter was R, and they smelled of chocolate. "Thanks," I told her. But quietly. I felt quiet now. I might even have felt impending doom now.

"I'm sorry for bringing this so late. I forgot all about eating, is the truth." She said. She opened her own food-thing, which looked like a granola bar. "Eat, Naruto. There wasn't enough money for me to bring you a full stomach's worth, but the cafeteria's closed and we must have something. A fuller stomach means an alert mind. I need you alert and ready. No stuttering, no random growling or hissing at something you don't like or understand. _Calm _and _friendly _to all."

"I can be calm and friendly." I said, but everyone around me could hear how hollow the words were.

"Can you?" Sasori murmured next to me. I didn't even look at him.

"I _can. _I will." The candy tasted good, but my stomach didn't feel any better. "I just...feel...nervous. Really nervous, and really suddenly, too."

"You only need to follow my lead." the little one said. "I'll be going out first, and when I call you, you come out. You answer any questions as clearly as possible. And don't fake any of your emotions, but for aggression, which you must hide at all costs." I nodded at her as she talked, not even an arm's length in front of me. I could have leaned my head into her shoulder. Rested. Hid. It's been a long time since I wanted to hide.

Somewhere on my left, I couldn't see, Deidara. "For god's sake, will you wear a coat this time? It's twenty-eight degrees out there," he said.

Sakura took up all of my vision now. I saw her shaking her head and smiling a little. She looked...like herself. Really nice. "I'm wearing long sleeves now, Deidara. I am prepared for winter." (She's worn shorts all her life, but she's never cold, never. I still wonder why. That's so weird. She doesn't even have fur.)

"I will never understand that part of you," Sasori hissed. He curled his tail around his legs.

"You don't need to." She passed between Kisame and Neji and threw away her wrapper. "It's time now. I'm going."

"N-now?" Kisame squeaked (Squeaked, really squeaked,) but Sakura just told him "yes" and walked away. Nobody stopped her and I felt more and more anguish churning up in me as she got farther away. My ears fell and my voice fell. I whined like a pup. One time, Neji might have hissed at me or clawed my ears if he heard me doing that but if he did this time, I didn't feel or hear a thing.

The sliding doors opened for Sakura and camera flashes awaited her. People screamed and I screeched in horror, and my heart squeezed itself. But Sakura didn't stop. She walked outside and we couldn't see her. Voices erupted and suddenly somebody was holding my tail and keeping me from clawing my way on the ground to run outside and help. The person's grip _hurt _and no matter what, I couldn't get away from them. TI just stayed there with my ears open and had to listen to the chaos.

And I heard the first thing she told people, that I could hear, was her name, and that she didn't want to hurt anyone.

The first question was whether or not she was a test tube baby. She laughed and said yes.

God, she's really doing it! This is _it. _

Neji came up next to me and the two of us were probably the most pathetic canine and feline pair ever, with our ears pinned like a sewing project flat to our heads, and our tails twined not in affection and our own brotherhood, but terror like a deadweight cloud of storm over our heads. Like biting our nails, unable to do any little thing. We sunk to the floor before any of the others. My hearing played to my advantage and at least I could hear the words being passed around. Sakura asked people for order and quiet. One at a time, please, I'll answer everything I can, haha, thank you, and stuff like that. All this...diplomatic, nice stuff that made people sit down. That's...good. It's good. I'm crossing my fingers right now.

Order did come and she did answer single questions. Someone asked, loudly, "Where did you come from?"

"Fucking loaded question, that." Kakashi scoffed.

Right after him, lots of similar ones came. "What the hell are you?" and "Do you actually fly?" and "You belong to the government, don't you?!" and five camera flashes in a second.

My ears were stone-still. I caught her answers easily. "I'm a successful science experiment, I'm proof that genetic mutation and splicing really does work. I don't belong to the government, to anyone. And you know where I'm from." They and their cameras and phones all slowed, or paused. They all noticed that one. "I'm from Chambers Incorporated, and I know the media sometime has a problem with lying, but that's not a lie. Not at all. I'm from the laboratory that burned up over in Tillamook. I escaped just a few weeks ago. I flew out and that was the first time I ever flew."

It took me one second. Just one. I slipped away from Neji and crawled forward, pulling even by my claws. I pulled up to a spot where I could see Sakura, standing in her pretty new outfit and her sweet face and her twitching wingtip. There's a plant and a large table by me that could mask me from outside sight. I hope it does. I need to see her and I don't care if someone sees me.

A second passed. A man stood up outside. His clothes are neat. Immaculate, actually. That's a good word. He's definitely a reporter, I would bet my life on it. There's a second person trying to beat him, trying to stand up faster, and I can absolutely _sense _that he wants to know if Sakura was the one who wrecked the lab. I feel in my bones up to the tips of my freaking ears...and when the first one fumbled and tripped, I laughed out loud.

So the other man gets to ask the question, _The _Question.

"Sakura. Did you have any part in that lab's destruction?"

Shit shit shit shit _no tell them no, was that the plan I forgot_

Cameras flashed on her and her hair fell in her face a tiny bit, and her shoulders went up and down with the movement of a long breath. Sakura thought. And my heart rate was fast and painful. My heart beat in fear for her.

"I did."

"That's _not right,_" I hissed and behind me, Deidara sunk his claws into my arm. Frustration, fury, fear. I smelled a little of all that on him. The people outside were bellowing. It was too loud, my god, too loud. Itachi told everyone to be calm but even Kakashi was shivering.

"My friends and I did that. We killed those people."

The questions and screeches got louder. Someone asked about Karin, the agent "investigating" Chambers, already discovered fake, and if we killed her, too. They asked how she killed the employees and if she ate human meat. I bowed my head. Submissively.

"I can't possibly justify that unless you understand who those people were!" She was screeching, too. "And your media coverage is more or less useless when it comes to that. Will you hear me out and listen to the reasons why we've done what we did? Don't I get that right to be heard?"

("Human rights" and "no, it'd be animal rights" and "murderer" and "shoot her")

They got quieter for her. The flashes were fewer now. Sakura sighed and her lips and brows together made an expression that seemed heavy and worried to me. I stared. "We killed those people because they killed us. I can't...I can't possibly make you understand everything. But you have to know those people were worthy of every drop of hate you have in your body. They ruined me and destroyed me. You saw what was in the laboratory!" Anger was on her now. She didn't hide one scrap. "That part is no goddamned tabloid lie. The tools, th-the knives and needles, the experiments they wrote about with starvation and bone re-breaking, that was _me. _That's what happened to me." Now it's melting. It's the face of the little one I wanted to curl around and protect my whole life. I feel nostalgic, and heavy. Like I'm turning into Itachi. _"_Every day, without pause. If you want to spit at me and argue about whether I should have 'animal rights' or human rights, you _can't,_ because up until three weeks ago I didn't have either of those. They dragged me around in a dog collar, broke my arms one day and induced seizures the next and eviscerated me and let me watch their hands inside me..."

The rest I can't hear because my ears are full of a rushing noise and it has to be blood rushing through them and all through the rest of me. I breathed deep to calm down, and stop shaking. But I still wanted to scream. What is she saying, to the whole world? That's her ugly secret. That's just her, and only we nine are supposed to know of that hell. How do we even...

"You can find proof yourself. It's in the laboratory, spilled everywhere. The records and the pictures and everything else, and some of it has be released by now. Some of you must have seen those things."

They are quieter now. It's too many long breaths of quiet where I'm biting my nails into the palms, and then someone says he did see released photos of the cleaning rooms. He doesn't say it, but we know and perhaps the public will soon know that those rooms are where used equipment is temporarily stored: the cutting things that haven't had the blood washed off yet.

"Not surgical equipment," he says, and he's sure right. "Saws. And cutting boards with red on them."

"I saw that article," a woman said after him.

"There _were _saws sometimes." Sakura added. And she is quieter now. I got back to watching her instead of putting all my attention into my ears, and I can see how tensely she's holding herself. "It's not pretty. It's disgusting. I hated and feared every second of what they did." Neji put his tail round mine again, and he's not as mortified now. But I can't relax. I sit and listen as the speed demon talks at length of Chambers and their dialy routines, and the other experiments from other lands around the world, the failed, ugly ones, the monsters that never could do anything but breathe and twitch. Some bits actually, _actually _manage to bore me because I lived them all a million times, too.

"I know the stigma against killing, I know the laws against killing. I know I ought to be prosecuted or even persecuted for it. I don't deny what I did...but I will _never _say that it was wrong." They paused here again. Our youngest stared down a crowd of wondering, accusing humans. We waited.

"After years of that treatment, by that kind of people, all for the purpose of us being war weapons-for _anyone _who would pay for us, not only this country-made me hate them with all my heart, For what was happening to me, I would confidently say that I was _defending myself. _If we didn't do what we did, those workers would have captured us again and started that treatment right up again ,and I'd probably die being shot full of holes on a surgical table. And then they would make another experiment like me and rip her up, too, or send her to a battlefield to murder soldiers if she was successful enough. If you want to punish me for it, please for the love of god, wait until you know everything I have to say, because I'm not the only mutated freak of nature around, there are others and they are dangerous. Let me finish telling you everything before you judge me or or sentence me. Please."

They oblige. I can see people staring at her, and nodding. Good, that's good. Okay. Sakura continues her story and tells more about Chambers, information we've all known a long time. Secrecy and lots of money. And Karin and Kabuto, the masterminds who still roam free and the only two to escape our attack on the lab. I know much of it, I know I've heard some before but never understood it, and I still don't. I don't want to repeat any of it. So I won't. But it did feel like a long time before I notice she's kept the whole story focused on herself, without any mention of how we saw most of those trials and tortures, too. And she never mentions the white rooms and how we would chase her. I didn't at all notice how she left those things out until I heard, "It was just the way for my friends and me."

Everyone except Number 9 latched on to that word. I...wrapped my whole self around it.

"Did she _call _me that? Really?" I was scratching the floor now. "Is she lying? Covering for us?"

"Be _quiet_!"

"She's hiding the truth of the Predator and Prey game." Kakashi said, talking fast. "That's what it means. She's going to say-"

For a second I can't hear Kakashi because my ears are full of people yelling about who the 'friends' are and if "Sharkzilla" is one of her fellows. They must mean Kisame, because we have problems if there's another Sharkzilla around here. Sakura raises her hand in this nice, peaceful gesture and says, "Yes, he's one of them. That's Kisame. He's with me."

_'With me? What is going on?'  
_

"There are nine of us total, all born in that same building. Maybe you already know that from lab evidence. I'm the last, the youngest. I've known the others all my life. I would have introduced them sooner, but...well, I wanted the truth about the laboratory out as fast as possible. Now, you can...you can meet the others."

A couple of guys scream for "Sharkzilla". Sakura waved her hands and then clasped them together, saying, "Okaaay," like this is kind of joke or a playful scene or whatever, and...and now she's turning back towards us. She walks a little way into the automatic doors and they open for her. "Kisame." She said. And she doesn't show any surprise at seeing most of us having creeped up closer to the door like she said we should not do at all. She just said, "You're first," to our favorite sharkman and...and he walked towards her.

I sat up and barked at him, "You'll be okay, Kisame!" He didn't turn back to me, though. Sakura asked him how he felt once he got close. I couldn't even hear his reply. And that was kind of startling.

Poor guy was probably sweating up a storm, I realized. When he got outside the camera flashes started anew, and people shrieked at him. It took an extra moment to realize they were shrieks of amazement, not terror. Kisame put one hand in his pocket and let the other hand down. It was one of the "cool people" poses that we had seen in magazines recently. It didn't...look like him that way. Sakura must have noticed, because she told him to relax, and rubbed the side of his arm. He stood normally after that.

"This is him, Mr. Bank Robber Stopper." Sakura said, with a hand on his sleeve. He noticed, and looked at her. "Kisame was called Number 7. He's, uh...a gentle giant, I guess. He gets sick pretty often and...and you look sick now, Kisame. Feeling okay?"

That sounds...kind of...obvious. Is she telling him to get his act together and calm down or, or making a cutesy joke or what? Kisame's face doesn't even change. He just looked over into the crowd of people and their phone cameras and regular cameras and said, "I'm...I'm nervous. This was a big plan of Sakura's, exposing ourselves to the public like this, and I, uh...I've worried my ass off thinking you would stone us to death or shoot us. Thanks for being understanding so far."

Another silence. Another heavy silence. Shit, he must have said something wrong! This is bad! Did they even understand him? If they didn't, oh...

And then some guy laughed and said, "It, It's fine! Sure!" and even though that doesn't really mean anything and he was probably being a wiseass, people start shuffling on their feet again and talking and asking things. I could see smiles and soft chuckles being passed around, signs of a good mood. Someone asked Kisame how he knew Sakura. And here's another frigging moment where I feel my tail fur falling out in suspense. I hope he says something good.

"I've seen Sakura around the lab since she was a little toddler, but I didn't interact with her till she was nearly a year old." He stopped, not even for a whole second, to look down at her. I think he's still terrified. "She'd aged several years by then, still a child but definitely enough to, well, be my friend, or something like that. I thought she was mute at the time, so we couldn't communicate so well, but she was still the only person in my whole world who didn't want to fucking stab me."

That definitely earned him some points. Man, look at those people grin. That quote's gonna everywhere. It'll be in the papers and on lots of the websites that people read and it'll be popular, and people will know him by his joke about stabbing people, and like him. It's like this is falling into place again! Already.

The others were called out, too. Sasori came next. And people gawked at his tail and how he would weave it around, but I spat a little at him because he was just being a prissy showoff. Then Neji and Deidara went together, and then _they _made a joke about Sasori being a prissy showoff, which the people laughed at. Then it was me going out there into the flashes and people with funny clothes, and...and soon everyone but poor bedridden Zetsu was out and totally exposed and and...it felt so weird. I felt like I weighed nothing. Sakura was right about how she wanted to do, and totally did, a majority of the talking. She told a few more Chambers' horror stories. She told how we experiments would stare at each other as we passed in the halls, and how we would play in the white rooms when we were put together. And from just those interactions, we all became friends, and knew each other.

There was no mention, _could _be no mention, of Sakura calling us her friends, and labeling our chasing games as actual games.

She'd gone from seeing our truth as a lie all her life and now she disguised her lie as our truth for the cameras. It was confusing, and frustrating and I wished I could pounce and question her right now.

Later. God, we will talk to her about this later. I'll chase her and pin her by her wings myself if I have to. But now I can't do shit. I'm stuck answering some jerk's question about if my fox ears can actually function as "real ears" and if I was born that way or they got "grafted" on, and I forgot what grafted means. I told him they were perfectly normal ears that were a part of me my whole life, and you bet he heard me in perfect English, without one animal, gibberish syllable.

"I need to put a stop to your questions," Kakashi said above everyone. All eyes went straight to him, and people asked him why, and to please not go and to shut up and lots of other...random things. "We wanted to..." He looked at Sakura but I didn't really see his expression. I bet he was asking her permission, that's what he should do, anyway.

"We wanted to show ourselves to the public once and for all, so you know the truth of us." the little one said. "This is everything I have to share about what we are. But that's not everything, not by a long shot."

"There are more of us." Deidara interjected. His arms are crossed now and he looks like he's the fricking boss of the cameras now. "They're not friendly, and they _will _kill you."

I felt the wrongness of that like Kisame kicking me in the neck. And the quietness that came right after was chilling. That was too direct, Deidara. Look at them. Look at those faces. I hear them whispering. For god's sake...you...fucking...!

The first reaction was a woman gasping and saying "Excuse me?" and the people's quiet shuffles and light stutters got a little louder and the one screeching voice telling us that we were liars, honest to god made me dizzy. Neji grabbed my shoulder and told me to breathe and, well, I assume I did.

"There are nine good experiments and that's all of us." Kisame shouted, raising both his hands for attention. "There are others from the other labs, ones that Karin is using. She's dropping them wherever she wants to cause whatever chaos and death she wants."

"Shut up!" Sakura hissed at him. In an instant she's appeared by him, making the little humans gasp and flinch, and shoves at him. The poor guy fell flat on his butt. Embarrassingly. People continued to whisper and wait for more answers.

She told them, "He's right. I'm sorry," and slapped her hand over her face. It covered her eyes, and I could see her mouth twitching. There could have been oncoming tears. "There are more experiments, from laboratories all around the world, and it's very likely that Karin has taken as many as she can and wants to cause pointless violence before she's caught and jailed for good."

A man rose up. "Why the hell didn't you-"

And Sakura flared her wings out halfway, taking a step forward. "Because if that's all you heard from me, all you would know or do is panic! This entire country would fall into a riot and thousands would die for no reason!" She stepped back, looking sheepish now. "_And _you would try to kill us!"

("I would never!" and "This is the government's fucking fault, I can't believe this, I can't believe this utter shit!" and "Please! Please! Where are the other ones?")

Now Itachi requested attention. "We don't know where they are." He said. "We want you all to take shelter for that reason. We can hunt down those remaining experiments, and find Karin, with minimal death if people stay safely in their homes or in shelters."

"She's in the country, I'm sure of it." I said, looking at him.

I could see Sakura bowing her head a little. "You can recognize the other experiments by their...their bodies." She said. "Very few of them will look human to you. We nine are the only human-shaped ones, and the only intelligent ones. And even the only ones who want to do good. All the others will truly look like monsters. If you see one you _must _hide."

"Call the military!"

"_Fuck _the military!"

"You can't expect us to seriously-"

"I would fight."

Kisame and I were staring at each other, baring our fangs in worried, contorted grins, and I don't think either of us noticed one of the speaking people near the front approach us till he was dangerously close. He approached the left side of our little formation-line thing, where Sakura and Kakashi were. He stopped in front of them and everyone around stared at him. He looked older than any of us, and really fit, and he stood straight as a board. He repeated himself. This was the man who said "I would fight."

"I believe you." The man said; I watched Sakura's eyes remain wide and wondering as she looked at him. She didn't even blink while he talked. "I'm only one man and it's not like I fully understand you, and this. But I will do my part to defeat the invaders on my country's soil. I hope you would allow me." He held out his hand. "Major Rutger," he said.

He's a military man. A soldier and fighter. He shook Sakura's hand when she brought it up, and she smiled at him. "Major Rutger. Don't you need permission of your superior officer to charge into a dangerous fight?"

Mr. Military laughed. "Already done, Sakura. Listening to you speak isn't the _very _first time I've heard of these creatures you're speaking of." He must have seen us on TV, then. Or maybe his army commanders are already doing something without us knowing. But he wouldn't say any more. And Sakura shook his hand again, and thanked him.

"We _will _need military assistance." She said. Not sure if that was supposed to surprise me or not. "Major. What you and your people are about to fight will seem like they're not even from this planet. And they will kill many people before this is done. You have to know that." Rutger said he already knew. And as he spoke, another man appeared out of the crowd. A police officer, by his uniform. He promised to to help, too. More individuals weeded out of the crowd and voiced a desire to fight Karin's monsters. It might have been the greatest moment of humans I'd ever seen in my whole life. They swore to kill Karin with us. The idea of us being 'prosecuted' that Sakura spoke of seemed a long way behind us. Now, we were liked and supported, and probably going to every corner of the world in a hundred little videos. It was the best public intro we could have imagined.

Then a couple came up to me and their little daughter offered a bag of Skittles to me. Not that I'm an expert, but I want to say their English wasn't perfect. Something funny about it. But I understood them. And I took what they offered me and let their daughter pet my ears when she asked. A new flurry of pictures started, and this one was all me and this little girl, a total stranger, clinging to me and smiling. And her parents shaking my hand.

And then it was better than we could have imagined.

66

January 25th, the anniversary of the second best day ever (Kakashi always says very best is always yet to come) 9:00-ish at night. Yeah. …Deidara POV

66

There's something in this world that's better than imported chocolate, but I haven't found it yet. I just have the chocolate.

It's one of the things I was given by a total stranger today. By god, you wouldn't believe the junk I got handed by strangers in a hospital parking lot today. This chocolate package, someone's silver haircomb (definitely good for me), a gold sourvenir coin from Ethiopia or something, a figurine of a parrot that I've never seen before, a carved, fat bird made of clay, and drawings of me from the young people. Little kids, bigger kids, college kids. I must have twenty-five at least, of varying quality. There's something totally awesome from all of them. All these people tried to put me on paper the way they saw me, in a burst of color, always with so much blue. My wings are a sunburst of color on every one, even if they're not colored, whether the drawing is talentless or beautiful.

These, I want to store someplace. I want these safe. These sudden, random gifts to me are some of the best things I've ever looked at in my life. I want to come back and see them again sometime. For now, I'm memorizing them.

It's amazing, isn't it? For god's sake, I'm more famous than Mickey Mouse. I'm a mascot of the country now, all of us are. At least, that's the impression we got from all the pictures, the people asking for us to quote and confirm things, and people who used us to talk about American accomplishments and stuff.

Me, a mascot. Holy fuck. I'm a guy made out of a person-body and macaw-wings. My love is a girl made of a person-body and goshawk-wings, and my best friend a scorpion-tail, and my other friend a shark-body. We're _famous. _

Today rocked. So hard. After talking in front of that crowd this morning, even though all we did was reveal global conspiracy and danger, people...people congratulated us and said hi, and gave us candy. We were petted by children and we shook hands with little old ladies. People showed me pictures of me they had put on their Facebook and that's probably the most surreal experience of my life: seeing my face on another person's phone. Like, where even am I? Space?

I could make a bigger list of the stuff I got (there were two iPods also) but I want to sleep tonight, not list things. Except the military. To think of them isn't really making a list, but if I give them too much though, I'll never get to sleep.

It's 'cause of that short guy in the camo outfit, Rutger something. Colonel Rutger is what he is, I think. I forgot, whatever. He's an Army man and he likes us. He was standing around when some big-ass helicopters landed in the parking lot, loaded with dudes in camo, and they made it known with pointless acts of showing off their guns that we are very interesting to the US Army, and if you will come with us, young sir, you will be back resting in this hospital before the week is over.

The _Army _came to talk to us. And some folks from the Navy weren't far behind. Kisame asked if the Coast Guard would come also and one Navy guy said there would be no "Puddle Pirates" coming here. So...no Coast Guard? No Puddle Pirates? I'm not gonna mess with that phrase, I don't even know.

Sakura the Translator told the army people no and with a little lingual magic forced the camo-men to do their examinations in the hospital lobby. I knew they wouldn't push us around while cameramen are watching and our faces are probably on live TV. She totally twisted them around till they agreed to do their examinations in an open spot in the hotel lobby. Once they started shuffling off with their stuff, I snuck up behind her and licked her cheek a little, to play, and to tell her she was doing great. She yelped once and wiped at her cheek, and people laughed. The man with the FOX News camera definitely saw. So then, millions saw. I feel pleased in the quiet, inside piece of myself that my claim on her has been made on a television camera. And I feel pleased in the rumbling stomach part of myself where chewed chocolate ends up. Jesus fuck this is so good, thank you, Germans.

It's as though all's right with the world. I love this moment.

Just now, I took a trip down the elevator that played a sad Excuse For Music thing all the way down and I was glad to get back on the floor where Zetsu was. He was strong enough to sit up now and his bleeding had slowed so much they only had to change the bandages twice a day now. People with cameras came to talk to him, too, but I didn't see. Sasori said Zetsu was very calm and friendly, just as he'd been told to be, and he shook lots of hands. Very diplomatic, hooray for Congressman Zetsu. Now he's alone, though, and I don't hear the television in his room playing the channel he likes with lots of animals. He was watching a thing earlier with a guy who wrestled gators and tied their mouths shut, which is _really _dumb for humans to do, but they never learn and the show was cool anyway, so it didn't matter.

That blonde nurse who isn't actually blonde passed by me and waved at me as she went. I flipped my wingtip at her and kinda-sorta smiled. Don't want to look peppy and fake all the time, right? The lady seemed to think it was a cool greeting. I got to the room pretty quick since the layout of this building is getting familiar. The door was open and another man in fatigues was just leaving, thank god.

Zetsu was inside as usual, lying on the bed. He was doing recovery walks now, which meant he could totally jog if he wanted, but the nurses couldn't handle that level of recovery, so he pretended to be slower than he really felt. Kisame, Sasori and Sakura were standing and sitting all over the place. Kisame was laying on the couch with his stomach facing the rear of the couch where a person's back should have been resting, and his back faced me. I don't know why he was laying like that. He's weird. And blue.

The TV was on. Honestly, that was more interesting, so I watched. It was a news channel, which was okay—because news can be—

Karin.

Crap. But it's not like we could keep her face out of our lives forever. It was a damn nice day, at least.

Karin's portrait was taking up the entire screen. I growled without meaning to and I didn't care. The newswoman was talking, and I barely heard what the she was saying. What I could see was all I cared about. The television showed a bird's-eye view of three people running down a street with a horse running behind them. The horse tackled two of the humans and reared up, revealing an extra pair of dangling legs on its stomach. These legs scraped and slashed at the defenseless humans till I couldn't see their faces through all the blood and loose flesh that covered them. It was just like the monsters we faced after landing the plane that held Zetsu, Neji and Sakura. The same attacks, the same monsters that don't look like they're from our world. Same violence.

Like I was underwater, a thought came to me in faded, echo-ey tones: _How could they show that on TV? _

The speed demon was standing very near me and staring at the scene gravely. I lifted a wing and smothered her view of the horror with blue feathers. I felt her grasp my wing and pinch it but she didn't move it away.

"Our break time is over." she whispered through my feathers. "I didn't think she would attack for days. It's been _hours._"

"She's insane." Zetsu said, just _real_ helpfully from his bed. I hissed at him, and he was quiet.

"How long has this been on?" I snarled.

He didn't answer me at first. He was waiting to be hissed at again. "A minute. Or two. First they showed a trio of them going through Atlanta. And then this. That one is in a suburb not far from here."

"Opposite sides of the country." Sakura sighed. I wished so much I could take the exhaustion out of her voice. "I wish I knew how many people she had helping her. The rest of Chambers must be running scared by now. Whoever is dumping those creatures on innocent people must be some gang she hired."

"Fucking god." I was the only one who turned. It was the dude with slick, pale hair Sakura had made friends with. I curled my lip at him instinctively and fuck polite behavior, I didn't bother to correct myself. He didn't even see me, he just looked at the TV, and that, I wanted to correct. "I almost came in here to congratulate you on how much you made people like you today." He stopped, looking upset, like he'd been about to say something bad. Which he already had. Rotten dumbass.

"You can go ahead and say it." Sakura said carelessly. "There are some people who will blame _us_ for what Karin does. Can't be helped…" (There had been people in the crowd today who already had. One of them walked away and called us government spies and I've been told that we shouldn't worry about him)

"What are you gonna do?" Hidan asked. "Go kill 'em? Arrange to meet the president?" The second one made me laugh a little.

"Kill them, of course!" Kisame scoffed. He looked at Sakura as he said it to make sure that was right.

"If they're still there." Sakura agreed. "In Atlanta, the military will be on the job. It'll be bloody and we should pray that people stay inside. But we can probably take care of that suburb a bit sooner than they could get there. We'll go, you guys. We'll split into teams. And after that, find Karin, and kill her." Yes. What I've been waiting to hear. "She'll be pouring out more and more of those things, as many as she can, until someone finds her and stops her. Zetsu," Zetsu suddenly turned all attentive, hah. "your blood pressure problems are gone and your wound is sealed. Your slit vein came back together almost on its own, didn't it?" He said yes. "Right. You're doing great. But I'm going to leave for that town _now, _and if you're too weak right now to come, you shouldn't, okay? We can't stand to have a member at half strength, you'll only be put in the hospital again with worse wounds and a longer healing time we can't afford."

To Zetsu, this was just an invitation to try his best to follow her; after what he heard on the plane from Karin, he wouldn't separate himself from her if he could help it. But Sakura might not know that. He sat up in bed and the puffy white bandage…item on his neck showed. "Of course I can come, I'm perfectly fine now. _Little women in scrubs can't keep me chained in here._"

"And you," she said to me. I looked her in the eye, tried to guess what she'd say. I saw her bright eyes turn dark. She was worrying again. "I need your help to find everybody else. For once we're not all in the same place."

I missed all of us being in the same place, too. It made everything feel…funner. "Kakashi's with Kakuzu, yeah." Pretty much everyone looked surprised at that. "I saw them walking together, and they didn't look that pissed, so I guess they get along okay. I don't know what they're doing, though."

"Kakashi's a clever diplomat and alliance-maker. He's probably faking." Zetsu suggested, but even I could tell his words weren't all full and confident. He got up off the bed. "Huh? _Ah, dammit, where are my new clothes? Sasori, check that bin by your tail." _Sasori checked it, drew out a pair of pants, and kicked the whole box over to Zetsu. _"Stop moping, everyone! When Karin is dead, everything will be better. She'll be near the place the beasts..._are attacking_. _Won't she?" He looked questioningly at the speed demon.

There was a really long pause. I didn't like it. "…Possibly." she said real awkwardly. "But…not likely. I thought that one—or a couple—of us would have to be captured again, just to be taken to wherever she's hiding—"

"Not you." Sasori interrupted. He stood up and stared at her. "Never again."

"Why not?" she dared to say. "She wants me dead. Not any of you. This is her last stand, Sasori, you know that. With nearly everyone on our side now, with the entire military on our side and her allies _and _ammunition shrinking every hour, this is absolutely her last chance. If I'm captured again, I will have to be taken to her simply because she knows she's out of time." Sasori glared. Oh, he glared. But so did she. It wasn't like a white room game, where she would run, or avoid his eyes. They were fighting for a leadership choice now. Sakura huffed at him then, saying, "Your bratty pose isn't going to save your stance here. Karin is strapped for time, I am your greatest weapon, and that's that. Drop your damned ugly frown right now. You." She stopped mid-sentence and just sort of…fell…_to _Sasori. It took me a sec to realize Sasori was doing his puppetry thing, manipulating gravity and that stuff to make her come over to him. And surprisingly it worked. Seeing Sasori's manipulation of gravity almost never worked on living things, just the plastic obstacles in the white room, and rocks and stuff. Hidan in his little insignificant spot looked dumbstruck and confused. Good.

When she got to him, she didn't even give him a chance to talk. "There isn't time for your little guardian spiel!" she cried. "If you can think of anything better, you can think of it on the way, can't you? I'll let you run it by me when we get to the town, and if it's an idiotic plan, you can still whine at me if you like."

Kisame raised his head, slowly in the face of her anger now, and said, "Karin's definitely insane enough to fall for whatever we try, if she's insane enough to do this." (Sakura didn't look like she agreed.)

I didn't think. I didn't need to. I started to insist, "Me too!" but Kisame barked at me like an angry dog. "Shut it! You have to stay back. Your sense of smell found us on the plane last time and it has to do the same thing again."

Like hell, you stupid, blue giant. You're not her only guardian. "We barely got there in time!" I yelled back. "You were there! We ran across the runway like fucking race cars and we almost missed it anyway! If we hadn't sprinted for our lives to catch the jet-"

"What are the odds they'll put us on a plane _again_?" the fishstick scoffed and got up off the couch. "We're connected with the people now! They know us, they know we want to help them, and they'll listen to us. It'll be much harder to fool whole hordes of people and lug us away on planes again. Right?" Sakura must have nodded. I didn't look. I was too busy glaring furiously at Kisame for agreeing with her _ridiculous _plan. "Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna go get everyone else. And you in the door there." I heard Hidan jump like a total idiot when Kisame pointed at him, and I turned to smirk at him. "You and those other guys can follow us if you want. But you might die."

"He can't understand you right now, Kisame." Sasori informed him.

"He gets that I'm not baring my teeth at him like you guys do. Sakura, would you tell him? I'm gonna go get everybody else. Gonna help, Dei?" I was frustrated and angry and I barely made myself say okay. I bared my fangs at Hidan as I went through the door.

Damn Kisame for being so _nice._ For pretending he's not furious at this human for bonding himself to Sakura. I should jab holes in their Jeep tires. They can't help us anyway.

666

January 25th. The electric sign on the Bank of America tells me it's 10:14 PM. Okay. Sakura POV…

666

Sherwood is what I imagined a suburb to be like when I was still trapped in the lab. One high school, sixteen-ish thousand people, and a lack of those gargantuan skyscrapers seen in New York and other such places. It's an American small town, a Small Town, actually, with capital letters because it is its own kind of entity. A small, definitely green place with big parks and lots of trees, and a lake that was probably frozen a week or two ago, and had local kids ice skating on it all hours of the day. We've seen one high school, a gorgeous downtown street, and the phrase "peace" painted in graffiti-scrawl on the side of a small bridge. This is a sweet little town and I like it already. I like it despite the boarded windows I see everywhere, and empty stores and empty streets, and tiny dots of scampering people, hurrying their supplies away. I saw an old couple sitting on a park bench, praying aloud, and I stopped to listen to them.

"We pray for the end of these demons, for Your grace to bless the soldiers who fight for our lives-"

_'People putting their faith in God.' _I thought. _'I've never...seen that before.' _

And that was a cruel, ignorant thought. Those two were no zoo animals and I shouldn't gawk at them like they were. But prayer was something I had yet to see outside of the jokes of the scientists and the lowly workers at the laboratory. Three weeks in the outside world, I think this is my first time really seeing people turning to God for hope and strength.

That was one facet of life and humanity that I'd unintentionally ignored for quite a long time. I had completely forgotten that people did that.

What about blessing themselves along with the soldiers? What about asking for protection from the monsters, come to life out of elaborate science fiction, that were coming through their town to kill them? They were still praying, still talking, and they had yet to ask for that. I did not notice until that moment that Neji was beside me, and Kakashi behind him. One of them poked me with a claw on my wrist.

"We're kind of in the middle of a mission." Kakashi told me.

"I know. I didn't mean to hold everyone up. Should I take those two people to a safer place? I can shove them inside someone's house."

Neji told me not to look at them, and that I should come back with the others and return to hunting Karin's mutated creatures. We moved on without the couple seemingly ever having noticed our staring at them. I am not proud at how easily I was coerced to leave them there, murmuring to nothing.

Kakashi was still playing the wise, sacrificial Obi-Wan (I'm in no mood for jokes at the moment, but I am a little grateful I do know what that means). He was the first to accept the fact that he couldn't stay with us, break off from the group and scout in a housing subdivision filled with ranch-style houses. I smiled at him for doing it, and I think he saw. Neji went to a newer, more modern street, hissing a challenge to any ugly mutants that might be nearby.

The mission to clear Sherwood of its monstrous invaders was clear, and so was Deidara's assholish insistence on clinging to me like a koala bear. I couldn't get more than ten feet away from the freak and if I flew, he ran underneath me as perfectly as a shadow. As you may have guessed, his overt degree of "protection" pissed me off and I had already decided he was not staying in my group. Whenever he finds a section of town to stick to, good fricking riddance. We would stick with my plan, by the way: our clearing Sherwood would, for one thing, be a solo affair: no army, no marines armed to the teeth to help us. They were in Portland now, and Gresham and Beaverton, fighting rat experiments and acid-spitting fish. We nine are here alone and soon it will be eight while I once again get handcuffs clapped on me by Karin, and I rip her up once and for all.

It occurred to me just now that I'm very, very willing for this to happen and yet, look at what it is: I'm jumping into an opportunity for Karin to imprison me. To cage me. How...my go...I don't believe it, now that I'm thinking of it: me, running to Karin holding a collar, so the men behind me don't have to. I never thought I'd see the day. Then again, I'm only eight years old, I haven't seen very many days outdoors.

The other experiments did promise to get me out again, to follow the plane to Alaska or overseas if needed. Itachi and Kakashi grudgingly conceded to this. They swore they'd die to get me out again, and I did thank them.

"Deidara, come with me." Deidara kept running alongside Kisame, below the airborne me, ignoring Sasori's command. Sasori had to use his puppetry force to make Deidara stop, which took eight to nine tries, and when he did grab the guy, and run down a curving street, that stupid, loud parrot still called out, "Kisame, _protect her!_"

Kisame scoffed when we were out of Deidara's range (and once Zetsu left us) and looked up and me. "Can you do me a favor and stay where I could lend you a hand if things get tough?"

"Certainly. We're a more attractive target together than moving around alone." My toes curled from how _stupidly, obviously, __dumb _that sounded.

Sharkzilla didn't seem to care. "If we find one, leave me a live body, if you can. I think what we need to attract some of its friends to us is a big, ugly screech. I can make it give us that, no problem."

I bet you fucking can, and that's not news. I'll be standing away from your spatter of gore when that happens. For now, I'm gloriously happy to have a distraction from Kisame's request and the images it brought: a sudden crash as a store display is hit by an animal swaying drunkenly into it as it runs. It's a blueish blur of color far up the street, and a trio of men were fleeing it and screaming to high heaven.

I drew up possible first-strike movements in my head as I took the first flap towards it: a head-first dive, aiming both fists at the thing's upper torso, electricity prepared but perhaps not necessary, and legs lightly curved in and prepared to twist completely around and deliver a donkey kick. Wings are prepared to whip open hard and buffet an enemy's face. I gained speed and heard Kisame growling as he realized what I was aiming for. Only one of the men paid us any notice, and he looked at us like we were saviors bearing monster-repelling shields and hand grenades. One of them even shouted just so, sorta: "Oh god, gracious blessed god, _heeelp!_"

Don't worry, sir. Don't worry. I'm coming and I'll save you. I was on the path towards the beast faster than Kisame, of course, and I saw the thing's shape as I got closer: it was two-legged, taller than a man, and scaly all over but for its feet and half the tail. I could have mistaken it for some balding dinosaur if not for the eyes on its tongue. From my distance I could see the eye was large, taking up most of the space on the tongue's surface, and fat enough to extend the pink covering on the bottomside too, making it look like the tongue itself tried to swallow the eye and it got stuck. That, and the huge, beating veins leading off from it, may or may not lead me to believe that this creature's eye is a hugely sensitive, important organ. This will be my first target. And my first one made in the express intention of protecting American citizens.

Behind me, Kisame was jumping over two of the fleeing men and making their screams hitch as he startled them. I chose to move with my later idea and twist around mid-flight till my legs were now heading straight for the monster's face; as the two-legged thing noticed me and bared its fangs, crying like a loosed hawk, its opened mouth was pathetically open for striking. The feel of its saliva was nothing compared to feeling the eye squish to mush under my heel. With its afterward screaming, I couldn't have had any spare attention for feeling gross or queasy, anyhow. My shark-faced companion appeared again with a raised fist, and as I whipped upward to avoid it, it crashed into the monster's chest, and it fell swiftly backwards into the same glass store display it had smashed through a minute earlier. It didn't stand up again.

"It's dead already?" Kisame sounded surprisingly gruff and happy to be punching things. Not a behavior that felt like him. "Aw, bitch! How are we gonna make ourselves get captured? We can't if they're all little cockroaches like that!" And now he's using bitch in place of 'damn'. Unless he's Hidan in disguise, I have to wonder about this guy. Maybe his mood changes in real battle. I guess I will soon learn.

"If there's a big enough group we can dive in and get smothered," I said, looking down the street. "But the ones we saw right after the plane weren't like this. The others—" I didn't finish. Something was making my skin crawl.

The feeling was familiar, uncomfortably so. I think even Naruto would have been able to recognize this. To my left were two more creatures poised on a low roofstop, their bodies tucked low and their limbs bent: they were like felines perfectly poised to pounce on us. Wisely, Kisame followed my gaze and saw them, too. And he bared his enormous fangs at them. He spoke something threatening in a growling animal language that all predators must know. The crouching cat-things didn't move.

"Look at their eyes," he whispered to me as he unbuttoned his coat, and I looked. I mean, I tried to. There were no eyes to look at. Just holes (as Kisame added in that moment, "They're not there, they're just holes!") And too smooth to be natural. They weren't creatures born eyeless, but ones whose eyes had been neatly, smoothly scooped out. These two feline experiments were made sightless, and could prepare themselves for an ambush attack, and recognize enemies. I wonder what the big flaw on these two really could be, then.

They leaped before I could guess. We were ready.

At least, I was. One of the cat-things jumped on Kisame and he writhed and kicked like he hadn't expected the movement at all! My cat-beast was a little faster. But I'm faster still. I dodged the slice of its front legs by diving under them. Far behind me, there was a cry of pain—I think human—and then one that was definitely not human—which, I hope, was one of my guys taking down the beast that had been going for the human. The cat's back legs were moving towards me in absurd slow-motion, and so I lost hope in a sudden attack or shock to its belly. My side hit the pavement hard, and I shot my left leg up in the air, effectively kicking the cat on the underside of the chin. Its tongue, crushed between the jaws, fell onto the pavement and bled. But the creature wasn't done.

Instead of acting _hurt _or something realistic like that, it whipped its head and front legs towards me. One of the paws just barely scraped me, slipping under the hem of the lovely white shirt Shizune had given me. The claw slashed my right side from hip to breast and the pain that flowered there was pathetically unexpected. It made me furious, just for a second, the complete ruin of something that had been gifted to me. And it hurt. Oh, it hurt. The beast's claws were not acidic or tipped in any noticeable poison, but merely sharpened to hell. It felt wrenched. And I grabbed the feline's face in my left hand and _heaved _electricity down it. The head bobbed in my grasp for four seconds, where everything convulsed together, and then it was dead. I crunched my fingers in further for a proper grip, and threw it ahead of me. Kisame came over to me, shaking, a few moments later. His eyes hovered around my new wound and remained there. I hadn't even really looked at it myself, so...I did.

The wound had made an eerie blood pattern on my shirt, and...a thin, black ring around my vision that could very well thicken until I pass out here in the street with Kisame as my only hope. The very idea made me shove my eyes back onto him. He looked nonthreatening and worried and cowed and...truly, genuinely frightened for me.

"It's all right," I said. The smoothness of that phrase was, rrm, difficult. I didn't expect that. Perhaps the feline's claws were tipped with poison after all. What sort? How fast would it spread in the bloodstream, and how in the world would I identify a cure? How sad would it be for me to start categorizing poisons and potential antidotes by my past reactions and pain levels I'd had to various kinds. Because shit, _that's _the only way out I can see now. Here I realized Kisame had just started to laugh at how I said this was all right. He looked in my eyes and I had the unwanted suspicion that he could see right through me...and I was suddenly disturbed. This was Kisame—not braniac Sasori or emotional Zetsu—how could _he _see through me?

"We should check the next street." I said a few seconds later.

"Nothin' to do but wait to get tranquilized," he (maybe-) quipped, and we set off down the corner. The next two streets were surprisingly quiet and only once did I see a face peeking out of a building. It was a woman, and she didn't look that surprised to see a six-foot-six blue man and a winged girl running around in the streets. That woman's face was the only one I saw in awhile. I didn't even see any of the other guys. If they were fighting, I'd hear it, wouldn't I? I would hear screaming people, wouldn't I? This silence was wrong. If the failed experiments had pulled out of here already, then they were heading to a new place. More people would be killed before we could get there.

We checked the next street and the one that intersected it. (Silverwing Lane. Ha.) There wasn't so much as a rat. "You think something's wrong?" Kisame took a few steps back and turned in a circle, looking quite confused indeed. "It shouldn't be this quiet. Right?"

God, I _hated _being looked at as the fountain of amazing answers!

"It shouldn't," I told him, seeing as it was most likely true. "This makes me think another ambush is in store. Or the experiments have bailed from Sherwood, which would be far worse. There could be a scent that tells us something. But I have the nose of a hawk…which is practically nothing," I added foolishly at the end.

"Mine's not much better than yours," he said, scanning the roofs. "There was a worker in the lab called Broekhart, and I heard him say a couple times that my sense of smell was one of my failed features. The only scent I can pick out easily is blood, like a real shark would, and that's about all. I _can _smell blood here, but it's only the blood of those three monsters. And one splatter from you."

I was only listening with half an ear, though that was more than enough. My peripheral vision had caught a darkly-clad figure and a suspiciously gun-like object on the roof of an apartment building. My eyes were never wrong; his gun pointed at us. I didn't dare look at it. I didn't dare.

"Kisame." I hissed. He lowered his voice instead of halting mouth movement altogether, an oddly wise move for Kisame. "Get ready and don't—"

The concentration of that Charge 350 must have been off the charts. I don't remember dropping to the pavement at all.

I do remember seeing and Sasori hiding around a corner, though. Over-dramatic as usual, standing there looking like they'd been shot in the heart, and hating the world for what was happening to them. Those two were my last sight before the drug kicked me out of the world of the living.

666

January something. It doesn't matter. Today—tonight—now—this could all end. Kisame POV.

666

I didn't wake up with an aching, pounding head like I usually did, like I usually _had, _I mean, when I had lived in the lab. I just woke up, like from a nap. But of course life has to throw a tedious downside to waking up from a nap: I could barely move at all. My eyes were mobile, though, and I think my head was mostly okay, too, so I looked around. The ceiling above me was really low…and not wide, either. There was also a funny trumpet-ish…roaring…sound…I don't think I'd ever heard it before—"

"It's a plane." I turned my head quickly, which was stupid, and I should have expected the flood of pain up my neck and shoulder. But it was still an infinite, sweet relief to see Sakura lying next to me, looking unharmed except for that terrible blood-stripe snaking up her shirt.

"It is?" I couldn't think of anything better to say.

"Yeah. Again. It's how I expected them to take us, but I'm concerned with how they went about doing it."

"What's that mean?"

"Hey, can you look forward? I mean, towards our feet?" And I tried, a lot slower this time, and saw a door practically an inch from my toes. The room we were in was very small. I could see a circular window at the top of the door, and beyond it, what looked like nothing, but it had to be another window, looking into the sky.

"Our flying is very rickety and loud...I think it's just this room and the cockpit making up this whole plane. And it's probably no Class-A flyer, either." she added, looking away from me. "I don't think they can hear us, but I can hear them. I heard them talking about how they landed in the street—just landed a plane in the _street_—loaded us in, and took off. I don't think it was that long ago. But they must have pumped us full of that drug. For god's sake, it's gross, it's...ahh...Kisame," she said my name softly, seriously, like I'd never heard it before, "I really can't move. Karin and more than one mercenary are behind that door and they'll be coming back soon."

"Don't worry." I said instantly. "I'll deal with it. You don't worry." I was talking nonsense, but I had to soothe her. I couldn't have stopped myself if I'd wanted to.

"_You _don't worry, either," She gave me one of those little, sweet smiles that could make a bullet wound bearable. "Itachi's heart would break if you died. I'm not going to be helpless and let that happen to him."

My reciprocating smile was so big I was probably showing fangs, but who the fuck cared?

Me smiling triggered a frown in her, like old days. "H-Hey, you don't have to…" And I felt that blurry wetness in my eye that she must have been upset over. She looked away, looking awkward and adorable and worthy of a nuzzle or a billion (as Naruto would say). "Well, I hope I don't break _your _heart, too."

"Nah," I said in a voice that was cracked only partially with vicious animal tranquilizer. "You'll just…make it…implode."

Whatever bond we had started forging then was broken off. The door in front of us flew open, smacked my leg, made the numb thing ache with movement. And the devil's bitch came through it.

"What, now you're awake? God, it only took you two nine fucking goddamn hours! Hey, Chloe, George, they're up now!" My eyes went of their own accord to the speed demon, and found her staring with a familiar intensity at Karin. I followed suit, since there was probably something special worth noticing if Sakura was staring in such a way. I think she just dropped a few notches on the spectrum of neatness. Her hair was scruffy and uncombed (and not just the half of it she kept that way on purpose), she was wearing one of those fancy, button-up shirts but the buttons weren't lined up right, and her left arm had blood smeared all over it.

"Well, well, well, what are we gonna do now that you two are awake and alive to feel pain?" She lifted her foot and nudged mine. I curled my lip and tried to move my foot away, but it barely twitched. "Still hate me, huh, fishdick? Like that matters. Hey, if I do this, will you hate me more?" She stalked over to Sakura and stepped on her stomach.

I hissed, bared my fangs, maybe even roared. I was so angry—I still can't remember.

"K-K-Karin! Is the blue one still—"

"They've both got enough tranquilizer in them to kill five elephants, Chloe! Keep circling!" She pressed harder. Sakura's eyes narrowed but she showed no pain. _My speed demon. Being stepped on. _I roared again.

"Karin!"

"KEEP GOING!"

The plane shuddered and shook. Karin stared down lustily at our speed demon. "I saw you on TV, bitch. I saw the lab burning on Fox News. And then later you were on nineteen different channels. Six in France, I hear. Maybe two in Belgium. I can't believe you're so _accepted._" Her other foot moved up. She was standing on Sakura. "No riots, no Christians howling at this act against God, no stoning! Why—" She bounced, jumped, slammed onto Sakura's ribcage. "—the hell—are you guys—so—_accepted!_ Dammit, bitch, say something!"

"I don't have anything to say to someone who can't even dress herself," Sakura spat venomously. "I'll consider you a threat when you can button your own shirt." A boot-clad foot slammed across Sakura's cheek, leaving dirt and blood.

"You wretched little failure!" Another kick. My blood was boiling. "You've ruined my life! Your freedom has ruined my life, do you hear me? I spent years giving you and your boyfriends bodies that wouldn't eat themselves alive! Do you know how hard it is to control the growth of all the cells in a human body? Or a bird body? Do you know how many cells that is? Do you know? Do—you—know?!"

My body throbbed with such pain my ears rang; they rang so loud I couldn't hear Karin scream when I reached over and bit into her boot.

"AAAaaaaaghh!"

I knew how deep I'd bitten. I had felt bone. Now I felt a satisfaction so deep that I smiled even as I watched Sakura panting and hissing in pain at her damaged ribs. "Aaaggh! You—you! I'll cut you up into sushi!" She drew a knife from her pants (which I didn't question at all) and fell towards me on her remaining foot. She fell onto her knees between us, the knife poised to stab into my muscled arm.

"That's all you're going to do?" Sakura gasped. I could hear her pain, and it tore at me more than any knife of Karin's ever could. "Kisame's a rather large guy, Karin, a couple stabs from a wounded woman won't do anything. Especially a wounded woman who can't crush a little girl's ribcage." That stopped her. She rose till she was on her knees, crazed and bloody-armed and looking as formidable as she could ever hope.

"You see my arm?" she whispered. "When we landed the plane I saw one of the failed experiments had wounded you, and left a pretty bloodstain on your shirt. I rubbed my hand all over it." She touched her red arm with the clean one, caressing it with disturbing softness. "This is your blood, my little freedom fighter. And I'm gonna come back with a knife and see some more of it." And she left, thank god.

Sakura's head fell back against the metal floor with a thud. "My god…" she gasped. Her face is so tired, so relieved. My little one. "I didn't think she'd stop."

"I tried to move sooner," I said softly. "I tried to make myself move faster…but this is what a pint of Charge will do. Really, I tried—"

"Stop, stop," she was, I think, laughing? "Not me! You! When she almost stabbed you in the arm, she was close to your brachial artery. And for all I know, she's stronger when she's mad. A cut there would make you bleed to death, and I barely had time to think of something to stop her. I didn't think she'd fall for a taunt that stupid."

The concern she seemed to have over me would be heartwarming if it weren't so amusing. "I think mine is a little more protected than the average human whatever-artery. I'd probably just get dizzy from losing the blood."

"You wanna get stabbed in the arm and find out?" Somehow it sounded like a joke. I laughed and she, well, she didn't frown I suppose, but I didn't want it to get silent after that. Not after she was starting to care.

"I was wondering, about when you were in the first plane and you stuck yourself in the neck, with the needle?" I don't know why I offered so many specifics. How many planes with needle-stabbing incidents had she been on?

"Yes?"

"Zetsu and Neji said you just stood up and jammed it in. You didn't act scared or hesitate or anything. How'd you do it?"

I was keeping my eyes on the ceiling for once, but with peripheral vision I could see her looking curiously at me. "How did I stab myself…" she muttered, and then added, "I just did what I had to do. If it really had made me mute in the end, it's not like I'd be losing a lot. I've only been talking for a few weeks. I'd be going back to normal. I know how to read, and writing can't be that hard. I could learn to communicate with writing, like Itachi and Sasori do now."

I couldn't understand how she could make light of losing her voice so easily. But there was plenty I didn't understand about her, that I hoped that I would later on. I didn't dwell on it. "Sasori found writing very easy when he learned it. Itachi had to watch him real carefully and his first tries were—" I spluttered at the memory, of those stick figures Itachi pretended were letters. "Awful. Godawful. It was so funny!"

Her quiet remark of, "…Did you save any?" struck me by surprise. "Six pages of it, I saved." I supplied her immediately. "They're on top of the refrigerator in the human boys' house. No one saw me put them there."

She was shaking beside me. Her lips were in a wiggly line because she was trying not to laugh. I think even her feathers trembled. This made me smile as well. I searched frantically for something else to please her, and found the best possible example.

"Hey, when everyone was going up north to meet you at that cliff," I couldn't remember the name of it, maybe "Jump" something, "we had to cross this frozen lake. Neji dared Naruto to go out first and he did, and he was okay, so Itachi went out after him and he slipped." Sakura raised a brow, but "slipped" didn't cover it all, so I had to go on. "One of his feet just started moving across the ice, and the other one went a different way. He moved so fast to try and steady himself he was _dancing, _I swear."

That laugh, that perfect and joyful laugh, I'll remember forever.

After a good long session of it, the chuckling died down. "Itachi dancing! I'll never need anything else to make me happy on a sad day!"

There was another period of silence after that. I didn't mind this one. My speed demon had shown me that she was beginning to care, even if she didn't show it in front of another person. It was certainly forgivable this time. She wouldn't dare show anything in front of Karin. I could never blame her for that. What bastard would?

"Kisame?" I stared at the ceiling, feeling a divine peace. I didn't ruin it, or ruin her courage, by staring at her. I just grunted to show I was listening. "Thank you for not being…like the others. It's nice to be with a person who isn't falling all over me with worry. I do appreciate your thoughtfulness."

"Like the others" encompassed a lot of things, but we both knew Naruto or Zetsu would be in tears were they in my position. I was above idiocy like that. "Naruto complains about that. He says I don't have enough energy."

"Naruto and his energy can go jump in front of a train," she murmured. There was no amusement or playfulness in that.

I guess it was appropriate that Karin returned then. Her buttons were lined up correctly now.

"I had a good long talk with George. Him and me agree a knife won't get through your animal brains. So I'll just crack 'em open instead." I had no idea what she meant by that. She couldn't crack open my head if she had a boulder to do it with, and if she went for Sakura again, I would gladly bite her again. But I understood when she stepped over me and lifted a latch on the wall. The wall became a door, and the door retracted back. There was nothing there but open sky.

The devil woman's smile was disgusting and her voice terribly calm. "You better hold on to your baby, Number 7. A lot of people have been watching the plane this morning. We're even being followed by an armed F-16. People will see you and they're gonna remember what happens today. January the twenty-sixth: shark man and hawk girl shatter to pieces in Portland, Oregon! World-changing science experiments spattered to jelly on pavement! An American tragedy!"

She started pushing Sakura towards me. I tried to lift an arm to accept her. I felt the familiar jump, the movement away from me that I've known for years, as we touched. However thankful she was for my lack of obsessive nuzzling and protectiveness, she wasn't willing to get so close to me yet. That was too damn bad for now. Karin went on pushing us towards the fierce wind. Her movements were pathetic and awkward with just one good leg to work with, and I bared my teeth every time her foot nudged too hard against me or my companion. Soon enough I felt a little strip of my back slip away from the metal. The floor wasn't going to last much longer.

My arms found strength of their own and tightened around Sakura. "Don't worry," I told her, like it made sense not to worry when we were about to fall out of the sky. She stared over my shoulder at the clouds beyond and didn't say anything to me. I had a second or two to realize my heart was beating so quickly it was painful, and sickening.

"I'll see you in hell, Number 9. Don't wait for me." Another kick. We were falling.

Oh Christ. Oh Christ. Oh shit, _what was happening? _

I'd never done anything like this. There was nothing below us, nothing! But then I realized my eyes had screwed themselves shut with fear, and I saw all the buildings below us. The skyscrapers and busy streets of downtown weren't far off. We would not land in the bustling downtown, but not a suburb either. And that meant there was less chance of grass, less chance of something almost-soft to land on. I knew this wouldn't kill us. We had been electrified together, I knew this wouldn't kill us. But it could cripple us forever. If we landed anywhere near a spire or tower, Sakura's wings could be ripped off. We could lose any amount of limbs, shatter any amount of bones. In seconds, we would be in so much pain we wouldn't be able to scream.

How did she stand this? Did Sakura fly with this same feeling of hurtling towards death? It wouldn't surprise me. Her bravery never did. She could learn to live with this feeling of dying. She could.

Now I could see the people clustered among the buildings. Karin hadn't lied. People had been watching her plane, while it circled the city. Thousands, all over every street. Some of them have protesting signs and on one street, there's even a tank. Somehow my friends must have made it known that we'd been taken, what the plane looked like, how much danger we were in, everything! Itachi and Sasori had probably been invaluable help. Itachi, Sasori and their flawless cursive.

I could hear myself panting. That and an oddly faint rustle of wind seemed to be the only sounds in the world. My eyes were too wide, my limbs too shaky, and Sakura too still. She felt dead in my arms. If she died there, I'd never be forgiven. The ground was coming up. My heart added a third sound to my fearful world. And I had an impulse while listening to those three sounds. On the chance, the tiny chance that Sakura died falling like this—I just had to do something to help prevent it. So I did.

People were screaming and pointing as we came down. I reached a hand towards the ground, below Sakura's shoulder, ready to absorb some of the impact and ready to deal with a crushed hand.

This was at the same time her left wing shot out sideways against my hand. We hit the ground, and everything went black. There wasn't a scream from either of us.

666

**EDIT, JANUARY 1ST, 12:58. AN HOUR INTO THE NEW YEAR. **

**The Airborne edit is complete. It's taken me months and months. A combination of distraction by other stories, TV and various Pokemon games, and starting in August, college, made it take this long. But it's finished, and all that's left is for me to write more. This is one of my first stories on FF and perhaps one of my most grand, and I'll take it to the end as artfully and awesomely as I possibly can, as artfully and awesomely as one can do with a MultiSaku situation.  
**

**Truth be told, I had wanted to finish this edit about two weeks ago, and post a new chapter on Christmas Day, with the only AN note at the top being a lone "Merry Christmas" with all comments put at the bottom. Obviously it didn't happen. But we can only go forward from here. I admit I will be switching back and forth between writing the new chapter for this and my final, VERY late oneshot contest prize for Izabella the Se7enth, a modern MultiSaku to do with models and photoshoots. **

**I will have some writing fuel in the form of a vicious deadline: January 30th, the date I leave home for Air Force boot camp. During this time, I will absolutely not be on the internet or be able to write things. **

**It's a strict little hell of a setting where I'll wake up at 4:45 every morning, be subjected to physical training regiments probably beyond my ability, and be called a shitty little excuse of a human being for making my bed incorrectly. And then I will correct it for five hours to make up for it. Boot camp lasts 8 weeks, at which point I go to tech school (much more lenient, internet/writing time is possible, or even likely) to learn my actual job in the AF: finances and payouts. I am no soldier, just a pay-person, but it pays for my college, and I feel quite excellent about making a life choice that most dismiss or even fear even though it pays amazingly, so...whoohoo~  
**

**I hope to write like the fucking wind during January so I can have a few things to post before I go. I might even have a few posted for me WHILE I'm at boot camp. I may give my password to a trusted friend and have them post it in my stead, so the things I write can be spaced out instead of given in a big grenade-like fashion in the last week of January that would be followed by three more months of "drought."  
**

**And that is all.  
**

**Chapter the twenty-sixth is coming.  
**

******(To think, two years and an hour ago, I was posting the first chapter of Seven. I was a high school junior sitting peacefully on a couch at midnight, unburdened by the idea of joining the military, college classes that are much harder than high school ones, friends living a hundred miles away from me, and moving out, which is a mixed blessing in its pleasant freedoms and also heartache for missing my mother and dog. The truth is, I would much rather be in high school than in college. I would much rather be leading an anime club meeting again or heading to Chinese class or being a library assistant at the library or...or a lot of things. High schoolers, enjoy your time there. It gets harder.) **

Ta...Storm


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